tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85865132018-02-19T10:33:26.085-06:00Pensacola Beach BlogA Beach View<p><a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/">Home</a></p>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.comBlogger2980125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-2751379579965505352010-09-22T08:40:00.000-05:002010-09-22T08:40:24.174-05:00On SabbaticalFriends, family, bloggers, an antagonist or two, and even spam artists are wondering whatever has become of Beach Blogger? Apologies are due all around. Consider us as groveling for your forgiveness.<div><br /></div><div>We're very well, thank you for asking, and as happy, sassy, and cynical as ever. <div><br /></div><div>We originally intended to take a short time off. But after a much too-abbreviated respite in a couple of westerly locations, we squarely confronted the reality that BP's oil spill had shoved another project of ours onto a back burner, and far too long at that. All in all, we lost three months on a looming deadline. </div><div><br /></div><div>We blame Tony Hayward and BP, of course. If Ken Feinberg thinks <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9I8BD7G0.htm">he's seen some dicey damage claims</a>, wait until he gets ours for missing the entry deadline for the <a href="http://www.oah.org/activities/awards/turner/index.html">Fredrick Jackson Turner award.</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Our blogging compadre, Barrier Island Girl, wistfully sighs through an email she sent us the other day that it looks like we've '<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/31/hayward-wants-life-back/">taken back our life</a>.' Not quite. We've just imprisoned it inside another passion for the time being. </div><div><br /></div><div>Wait a bit more. Blogging will resume shortly, though it likely will be light. In the meantime, we recommend you consult our blogging neighbors<a href="http://whynow.dumka.us/"> Why Now?</a> and <a href="http://barrierislandgirl.blogspot.com/">Barrier Island Girl.</a> They're both superb. </div></div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-20085944847540408172010-07-29T13:43:00.003-05:002010-07-29T13:53:12.430-05:00Disappearing Thursday: July 29 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGsi61CrTI/AAAAAAAAEFg/99usFiJLPOs/s1600/10_0729_gator-report.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 234px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGsi61CrTI/AAAAAAAAEFg/99usFiJLPOs/s400/10_0729_gator-report.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499366335903345970" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><div><div><div><div><br />Another interactive web tool, this one developed by the State Emergency Response Team (SERT) for the Florida Division of Emergency Management's <a href="http://www.floridadisaster.org/">FloridaDisaster.org</a>, says <a href="http://www.floridadisaster.org/eoc/DeepwaterHorizon2010/documents/situation_report91_072810.pdf">today:</a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Winds over Florida waters are expected to be out of the northwest in the morning, shifting out of a general west direction in the afternoon from Wednesday through Friday. Winds should be 15 knots or less within 60 miles of the coastline e</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ach day, with waves less than 3 feet.<br /><br />Rain chances will begin to increase again on Thursday and Friday to around 30-40% each day through the weekend. Heat indices will be near 100-105 degrees along the shoreline through the next several days, though some isolated areas may reach as high as 108.</span> </blockquote>In <a href="http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/files/response/0710/deepwater_response_072910.pdf"> another s</a><a href="http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/files/response/0710/deepwater_response_072910.pdf">ection of the web site</a> the state division says:<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Although sporadic sightings of tar balls may continue, Florida’s shoreline is not expected to receive additional impacts over the next 72 hours.</span></blockquote><b>2. Towing Boom.<br /><br /></b><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGvo_vzYSI/AAAAAAAAEFo/zr_3q3axwIQ/s1600/10_0728_ftpik_boom.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 254px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGvo_vzYSI/AAAAAAAAEFo/zr_3q3axwIQ/s400/10_0728_ftpik_boom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499369738837647650" border="0" /></a>Nevertheless, yesterday we saw one small boat hauling about 300-400 feet of boom behind it, heading for the entrance to Pensacola Bay (<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGvo_vzYSI/AAAAAAAAEFo/zr_3q3axwIQ/s1600/10_0728_ftpik_boom.jpg">click above</a>). Nearby, two shrimp boats looked like they were getting into position to skim any oil.<br /><br /><b>3. Disappearing Tourists</b>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-29/bp-oil-leak-avoids-florida-as-do-tourists-who-think-otherwise.html">Jim Snyder of Bloomberg News reported late last night</a> that although only Florida's four panhandle counties have been directly affected by BP's oil spill, "Florida’s claims for spill damage are surpassing those from other Gulf States that have suffered more direct physical damage."<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Florida filed 32,762 claims through last week, topping No. 2 Louisiana by more than two thousand, said Scott Dean, a spokesman for [BP].<br /><br />Because of Florida’s heavier dependence on beach tourism, it will take the biggest hit in dollars from the spill, a study commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association found.<br /><br />The state will lose $7.6 billion, a 13 percent decline, if the accident’s impact lasts 15 months and $18.6 billion, a drop of 14 percent, if it lingers for 36 months, according to the study by Oxford Economics, a U.K. economics firm. The percentage declines will be greater for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, Oxford Economics said. </span></blockquote>From all appearances, it looks like claims by Floridians soon will be mounting even higher. <a href="http://www.portfolio.com/companies-executives/2010/07/29/new-data-shows-bp-spill-is-a-big-disaster-for-some-small-business">One business journal reports</a> that many more Florida business owners "have BP in their sights and plan to seek compensation." What's more, it appears these are all businesses based in south Florida, which has yet to see any direct impact from the oil spill. The <a href="http://assets.bizjournals.com/cms_media/tampabay/TBBJ%20OIL%20SPILL%20SURVEY%20RESULTS.pdf">report is based on data collected from</a> "businesses... located in Sarasota, Lee/Collier, Manatee, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. Disappearing Claims. </span><br /><br />Good luck with that. As <a href="http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/dcblog/2010/07/lost_tourism_because_of_spill.html">the Sun-Sentinel reports</a> the newly appointed administrator of the $20 billion BP trust fund, Kenneth Feinberg, told Congress yesterday that while public "perception" may be a compensable injury for a business that is losing tourist income, "every business that loses money as an indirect result of the spill may not be compensated."<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[T]hose more directly affected and relatively close to the spill would be eligible.<br /><br />"I will have to draw some lines on eligibility," [Feinberg] said. "The lines will be based on proximity to the beach and the (individual’s or company’s) dependence on natural resources for fishing or whatever."<br /><br />"Actual physical damage to property is not required," he said.<br /><br />"If the perception harms a hotel on the beach, even if there’s no damage, that’s compensable. It’s another thing if the perception harms a hotel 70 miles inland."</span></blockquote>The Sun-Sentinel's sense of this is that "businesses along the western Panhandle will get some BP money because of the devastation to its tourism industry. Those elsewhere in Florida -- even if they lose prospective visitors -- probably will not see compensation."<br /><br />As for those who have weekend water-front cabins or other property within the oil zone, they also likely have a long and probably fruitless struggle ahead. One example was <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128830924">mentioned by NPR last night</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Preston Mayeaux, 59, knows where he would draw the line.<br /><br />He walked into a BP claims center this week seeking compensation because, he says, the property value has plummeted at the small cabin he owns on Bayou John Charles. He says he can no longer enjoy summer weekends on the oily water.<br /><br />"I lost my golden years that I wanted to be able to go to my fishing camp, and how do you put a price on </span><span style="font-size:85%;">that?" Mayeaux says. "I don't know how you put a price on that."<br /><br />Apparently, neither did the BP claims official who Mayeaux says gave him a lot more pushback than sympathy. If BP's recklessness caused the spill, then he says people like him should be compensated. </span></blockquote>To add to the attenuated nature of some claims is the fact that the economy was a mess well before the BP oil spill.<br /><br />"We know there’s been an impact and loss," says <a href="http://www.portfolio.com/companies-executives/2010/07/29/new-data-shows-bp-spill-is-a-big-disaster-for-some-small-business">one south Florida restauranteur</a>, "but how do you show a difference when you’re measuring against a year of recession? Last year was such a bad year."<br /><b><br />5. Disappearing Oil.</b></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFHIhXYPzQI/AAAAAAAAEFw/O7NIASvnRz0/s1600/10_0728_tarballs-Ft-pick-prk.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 176px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFHIhXYPzQI/AAAAAAAAEFw/O7NIASvnRz0/s200/10_0728_tarballs-Ft-pick-prk.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499397095533038850" border="0" /></a>Not only tourists have disappeared. Apparently, so has about half of BP's oil spill.<br /><br />We continue to find <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/corporate-games-tuesday-july-27-bp-oil.html#tarballs">tarballs in sargasso washed up on the beach</a>, or half-buried in the sand next to a cement piling at Ft. Pickens Park (<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFHIhXYPzQI/AAAAAAAAEFw/O7NIASvnRz0/s1600/10_0728_tarballs-Ft-pick-prk.jpg">see left</a>) on the west end of Pensacola Beach -- just steps from a clean-up crew.<br /><br />But over the length and breadth of the Gulf the new question seems to be, as <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/28/AR2010072806135_pf.html">David A. Fahrenthold and Leslie Tamura phrase the question for WaPo</a>, "Where did all the oil go?"<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Up to 4 million barrels (167 million gallons), the vast majority of the spill, remains unaccounted for in government statistics. Some of it has, most likely, been cleaned up by nature. Other amounts may be gone from the water, but they could have taken on a second life as contaminants in the air, or in landfills around the Gulf Coast.<br /><br />And some oil is still out there -- probably mixed with chemical dispersants. Some scientists have described it floating in underwater clouds, which one compared to a toxic fog. </span></blockquote>NOAA's administrator, the <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/bye-bye-tony-sunday-july-25-bp-oil.html#lubchenco">credibility-impaired Jane Lubchenco</a>, says it's neither gone nor killing the Gulf. "The truth is in the middle," she asserts.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Relying on the latest estimate of the leak's total volume -- 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons) per day, at most -- then 5.2 million barrels may have escaped over 86 days. Of that, about 1.2 million barrels were either siphoned, burned or skimmed. </span> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"> That would leave slightly less than 4 million barrels missing. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The best-case scenario is that much of this amount has been eaten by the gulf's natural stock of oil-munching microbes. Several scientists have said they are concerned that these microbes could cause their own problems, depleting the oxygen that gulf creatures need in the water. </span></p></blockquote><p>It looks like we're about to witness a rematch between NOAA scientists versus the rest of the scientific community. </p><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">NOAA scientists have offered upbeat assessments of the oil that remains below the ocean's surface, saying they've seen significant concentrations only near the wellhead.<br /><br />But other scientists, working for Gulf Coast universities, have reported finding large "clouds" of oil miles away from the site. </span></blockquote>WaPo quotes Prof. Caz Taylor of Tulane University as saying, "We're so unsure of what's going on at this point," including whether the oil might hurt creatures that eat the crabs, Taylor said.<br /><br />"The worrying thing," she adds, "is that we're seeing these droplets everywhere that we're sampling," from Galveston Bay, Tex., to Pensacola, Fla.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. Disappearing BeachBlogger.</span><br /><br />Speaking of disappearing, we'll be taking a break for a few days and leaving all the electronics and phones and tarballs behind. We'll be back toward the end of next week.<br /></div></div></div></div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-55336859684216354952010-07-29T13:41:00.002-05:002010-07-29T15:03:09.731-05:00Pensacola Beach: BP Going Green<div>We spent much of yesterday traipsing down the beach to Ft. Pickens and stopping along the way from time to time to talk with clean-up workers.<br /><br />Some workers are more loquacious these days than formerly. Perhaps it's because they have fewer tarballs to pick up. More likely, it's because withering criticism has forced BP to relax what Mac McClelland called its <a href="http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2010/06/grande-terre-dolphin-towels-bp-cleanup">"gag order" on clean-up workers</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">Green for Clean<br /></div><br />Yesterday, one thing stood out for us: clean-up worker uniforms are going green. BP green, in many instances.<br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFFqpGo_Q2I/AAAAAAAAEDg/5zruao_Smfo/s200/10_0729_nav-bch-clean-up_0604.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 104px; height: 200px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499293874385797986" border="0" />Going <a href="http://www.retrocampaigns.com/clean-for-gene.html">"clean for Gene"</a> even today is a phrase that denotes a remarkable turn-around in American history, public opinion, and politics. Cutting off that long hair in 1968 to work for Eugene McCarthy elevated anti-war activism to a politically acceptable level and brought down a war president.</div><div><br />As Prof. Joshua I. Miller has argued at some length, "Fashion affects citizens’ perceptions of one another, and therefore influences their political bonds." [Miller, "Fashion and Democratic Relationships," 37 <i>Polity</i> 3, 5 (January, 2005).] It's as true today as it was forty-two years ago.<br /><br />Time was when BP's clean-up crews dressed like work release prisoners, as in the snapshot we took in the bad old days of early June at Navarre Beach (above left).<br /><br />A month or so later, blazing orange vests predominated. Orange is a color that fairly shouts "<i>Look out! Danger! Emergency!</i>" It fascinates herons, apparently (below), but it's a definite turn-off for beach visitors looking to relax by the sea.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGTJ653Q1I/AAAAAAAAEFI/MQnF91yMrt8/s1600/10_0728_deere-cat-massup.jpg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFFuLl7t1OI/AAAAAAAAED4/VsBmPC1v5mw/s400/10_0729_ftpick-orangevest.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 262px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499297765436282082" border="0" /></a></div><br />Over the past few weeks, however, a sartorial transition in BP clean-up crews seems to have been gaining momentum. For one thing, new T-shirts are coming off the looms, proudly emblazoned with the words, "Qualified Community Responder" (below).<br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFFr-dHXM0I/AAAAAAAAEDw/GieT7TanNIU/s400/10_0728_crew2_qualified-responder.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 200px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499295340707656514" border="0" /></div><div>It seems not everyone gets one, however. We'd like to think that's because they can be worn only by those who have received superior training so as to qualify for such a snazzy T-shirt. But a reliable source tells us it's because there is presently a severe shortage of the new uniforms.<br /><br />"They're making them as fast as they can," one supervisor told us confidentially. "We expect a new shipment any time."</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>As a result, at least for awhile longer we're likely to see scenes like this one, below, with one worker decked out in BP's <i>dernier cri</i> and another still saddled with last month's out-dated duds.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGTJ653Q1I/AAAAAAAAEFI/MQnF91yMrt8/s1600/10_0728_deere-cat-massup.jpg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFFxZ79I9GI/AAAAAAAAEEA/olczAD_Hf2k/s400/10_0728_rosella-grn.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499301310400885858" border="0" /></a> <div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br />The Psychology of Green</b><br /></div><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div>It's all a PR stunt, of course. The purpose is to put the minds of beach-goers at ease; or, preferably, completely asleep.<br /><br /><a href="http://precisionintermedia.com/color.html">Business consultants consider green</a> to be a "calming color... that's very pleasing to the senses."<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Dark forest green is associated with terms like conservative, masculine and wealth. Hospitals use light green rooms because they too are found to be calming to patients. It is also the color associated with envy, good luck, generosity and fertility. It is the traditional color of peace, harmony, comfortable nurturing, support and well paced energy.</span></blockquote>British Petroleum undoubtedly hopes that something in between dark and light green -- we'll call it<span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">"BP green"</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> </span>-- is the best color to make you soporific and insensible to any disaster that is transpiring around you.<br /><br />Someone, somewhere at BP is battling back against the hilarious, mocking caricatures of BP's logo, such as those <a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/bp-logo-oil-spill">here</a>.... and <a href="http://www.bagofnothing.com/2010/06/bp-logo-redesign-contest/">here</a>... and <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/bp-cares-t-shirt-oil-stains.php">here</a>, among dozens of others sites. When the entire art world burlesques your logo, your corporate image is in mortal danger. Or, so we imagine the PR types suppose who focus on superficialities.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">BP Fashion Accessories<br /></div><br /></div><div>On the beach this week we saw signs that BP's PR department is counter-punching with more than just green T-shirts. Everything is turning green. </div><div><br /></div><div>Clean up crews increasingly accessorize with green clean-up crew dune buggies....<br /><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGA7s4NywI/AAAAAAAAEFA/j9070bmg2Ho/s400/10_0728_johndeere3_dunbig_grn.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499318383143668482" border="0" /><div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div>Beach scrapers are becoming green...<br /><div><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFF-qiW2DfI/AAAAAAAAEE4/tKS5hBRtacM/s400/10_0728_johndeere1_grn.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499315889238314482" border="0" /><div style="text-align: center;"> </div> <div><div>More clean-up crew road graders are transitioning from last month's Caterpillar yellow (insert, below) to John Deere green...<br /><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGTJ653Q1I/AAAAAAAAEFI/MQnF91yMrt8/s1600/10_0728_deere-cat-massup.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 280px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGTJ653Q1I/AAAAAAAAEFI/MQnF91yMrt8/s400/10_0728_deere-cat-massup.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499338418636145490" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"> </div> <div> <div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Even green porta-potties, increasingly, stand sentry where once they were yellow, tan, and blue...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div> </div><div><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFF9bD5CL2I/AAAAAAAAEEw/ZVpHetYKS74/s400/10_0728_portapotties_grn.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499314523850551138" border="0" /><div style="text-align: center;"> </div> <div> <div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div> </div><div> </div><div><div> <div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div> <div> <div style="text-align: center;"> </div> </div> The endless stream of white vans is still visible, as it was two months ago:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"> <div style="text-align: center;"><b><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGYPXIT73I/AAAAAAAAEFY/Xe0mcgE_T9w/s1600/10_0728_white-vans.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 184px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGYPXIT73I/AAAAAAAAEFY/Xe0mcgE_T9w/s400/10_0728_white-vans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499344009670422386" border="0" /></a></b></div> </div> <div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGVJIi8EiI/AAAAAAAAEFQ/GaTWmeQGUu0/s1600/10_729_scion.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 145px; height: 105px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFGVJIi8EiI/AAAAAAAAEFQ/GaTWmeQGUu0/s200/10_729_scion.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499340604141474338" border="0" /></a></div> But we have no doubt that John Deere can help BP with that, too. If not, then soon enough we'll probably be seeing fleets of Japanese-built green Scions taking their place.<br /><br />It's also a good bet that somewhere in London an army of lawyers is hard at work trying to figure out if there's some way to get worldwide trademark protection on BP's particular shade of green. With that, they just might be able to put the entire world to sleep even as the Gulf of Mexico dies, the Earth grows warmer, and our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels renders the planet completely uninhabitable.<br /></div></div></div></div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-64109269904299469472010-07-28T17:22:00.001-05:002010-07-28T17:27:44.754-05:00BP Anniversary: Wednesday July 28 BP Oil Spill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFB5AfykSXI/AAAAAAAAEDQ/Gz30KpOjrho/s1600/10_0727_geoplat_72-hr_proj.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 208px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFB5AfykSXI/AAAAAAAAEDQ/Gz30KpOjrho/s400/10_0727_geoplat_72-hr_proj.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499028194459928946" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast</b><br /><br />The <a href="http://gomex.erma.noaa.gov/erma.html#x=-90.42000&amp;y=28.03000&amp;z=6&amp;layers=5723+7391+3796+7303+7776">interactive GeoPlatform</a>, a superior tool developed by the University of New Hampshire and NOAA, today is showing mostly "light oiling" along Santa Rosa Island over the next seventy-two hours. You can reconfigure the display yourself if you're interested in other areas of the Gulf Coast or other indices.<br /><br /><b>2. 100 Days.</b><br /><br />All the<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5invct2tdMai2ExWeQaGJwFmdt9Xg"> news organizations are noting</a> that today marks the one hundredth day anniversary of the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. As George Altman of the <a href="http://blog.al.com/live/2010/07/oil_spill_day_100_despite_rece.html">Mobile Register describes it:</a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Exactly 100 days ago, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people and spawning what has been called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Federal officials say they could permanently plug the broken oil well in a matter of weeks, but even if they are successful, an enormous recovery project still lies ahead.</span></blockquote>The Economist magazine, which loves to chart all kinds of stuff, last week<a href="http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&amp;story_id=16630746"> added the BP oil catastrophe</a> to the <a href="http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/ssc/labs/cameron/e134w01/selected_major_oil_spills.gif">long list of other 'worst'</a> peacetime oil spills in history. (See below). Even if one accepts the London-based magazine's British-friendly low-ball estimate of the total barrels of BP oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico -- and discounts the magazine's inexplicable obliviousness to the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell">ongoing Nigerian oil disaster</a> -- BP wins the dubious distinction of the world's worst oil polluter, tarball-blackened hands down.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFAuZttcmZI/AAAAAAAAEDI/kwFcLtV2Tpo/s1600/10_0728_biggestoilspills.gif"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TFAuZttcmZI/AAAAAAAAEDI/kwFcLtV2Tpo/s400/10_0728_biggestoilspills.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498946164321196434" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Size and Amount Matter.</span><br /><br />Skytruth <a href="http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/07/bp-gulf-oil-spill-68000-square-miles-of.html">yesterday posted a different sort of chart</a>, one showing that "cumulatively, the surface oil slicks and sheen observed on ... satellite images directly impacted 68,000 square miles of ocean - <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_edvxM1dkFlo/TE9RbxxyTsI/AAAAAAAAAl0/r7Rs7VEqMz0/s1600/SkyTruth_cumulative_BP_spill_16jul10.jpg">as big as the state of Oklahoma</a>."<br /><br />What we find more interesting, however, are charts showing how much in wealth all these momentous oil spills have cost the human species. A year and a half ago, Jeff Siegel was marking the anniversary of what was then, in some circles, considered the world's worst oil spill -- the Exxon Valdez disaster. [<a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/03/exxon-youve-come-a-long-way-baby/">"You've Come a Long Way, Baby"</a>]<br /><br />Siegel's calculations show the cumulative cost of twenty notable oil spills, adjusted for inflation, totalled $41,142,623,500. Yesterday, British Petroleum nearly doubled that amount when it announced it had a second quarter loss of $17.2 billion and is setting aside another $15 billion to cover projected charges against future earnings. The $32 billion total quite likely could rise, BP's chairman of the board <a href="http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2010/07/27/bps-svanberg-tells-bloomberg-32b-is-best-guess-on-damages/?mod=rss_BOLBlog">told Barron's yesterday</a>. And, he's strangely optimistic no fines for gross negligence will add to the total.<br /><br />As Seigel's article begs to be asked, how much better off would we and the warming earth be if that money had been poured into alternatives to carbon-based fossil fuels?<br /><br /><b>4. Long Term Recovery.</b><br /><br />It's clear that we won't know the full cost of BP's criminal negligence for decades to come. As <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/27/98242/oil-spill-experts-gulf-damage.html">McClatchy News reports</a> Minnesota attorney Bill O'Neill, who handled Exxon Valdez lawsuits for fishermen and businesses, told a Senate committee yesterday, "The inability to know the impacts of the spill are inherent in oil spills. In three or four years, you're still not going to know what the impact of the spill is."<br /><br />BP's newly designated CEO, Robert Dudley, said in <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/robert_dudley_incoming_ceo_of.html">a conference call with reporters yesterday</a> that "he hopes 'five years from now' people will look back and conclude his company acted with "incredible corporate responsibility to a very tragic accident." But attorney O'Neill points out that it took many more years than that in Alaska to verify that some local fisheries there could never recover. And another witness, a native of Cordova, Alaska, says it took fifteen years for his town to recover economically.<br /><br />As <a href="http://na.oceana.org/sites/default/files/_campaigns/oil_pollution/Long-term_Recovery_factsheet.pdf">Oceana.org points out in a fact sheet</a>, BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe released "an oil spill the size of Exxon Valdez" every 4 to 7 days over the course of the last three months. Some 21 years later in Alaska --<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">there are still two species that continue to be listed as “not recovered,” these are the Pacific herring and pigeon guillemot. There are ten species that are still “recovering”, including sea otters, killer whales, clams, and mussels. Commercial fishing, recreation and tourism are among the “human services” still listed as “recovering.” The ten species listed as “recovered” include bald eagles, pink and sockeye salmon and harbor seals. There are five resources listed as “unknown,” including the cutthroat trout, rockfish and subtidal communities.</span><br /></blockquote><b>5. </b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gulf Spill Legislation. </span><br /><br />Even without knowing how long or deep will be the effects of BP's oil spill, both the U.S. House and the Senate are considering <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/offshore_drilling_legislation.html"> legislation that would "toughen regulations on offshore drilling,"</a> the Times Picayune reports. Late is better than never, we suppose.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/07/28/28greenwire-house-senate-democrats-race-to-complete-oil-sp-79716.html?scp=4&amp;sq=greenwire&amp;st=cse">New York Times reprints an article from Greenwire </a>by Katie Howell and Robin Bravender that identifies a number of near-identical provisions in the two bills:<br /><ul><li>"Both measures require drillers to beef up their oil spill response plans that are filed before drilling begins."</li><li>Both would write into statutory law the regulatory restructuring of MMS announced over a month ago by the Interior Department;</li><li>"The two bills would raise the liability limits for oil companies responsible for spills." The Senate does this cleanly by eliminating the current $75 million liability limitation for oil; the House bill merely would authorize a president to raise the cap.</li><li>"Both measures would grant the presidential commission tasked with investigating the oil spill subpoena power to conduct its investigations and would increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund."</li><li>The Senate bill "would set up a multiagency oil spill research and development program is similar to a measure passed on the House floor last week (<a href="http://www.eenews.net/assets/2010/07/14/document_pm_01.pdf"><b>H.R. 2693</b></a> (pdf)). The House has also passed a version <a href="http://www.rules.house.gov/111/LegText/111_hr50192_txt.pdf"><b>H.R. 5019</b></a> of the "Home Star" energy-efficiency retrofit program that is included in the Senate bill.</li></ul>The House bill, which is scheduled for floor debate tomorrow, also includes an additional provision that would "that would ban companies that have suffered 10 or more deaths at offshore and onshore drilling facilities over the past seven years from getting new permits." Guess the name of the only corporation on planet earth which would be barred from the Gulf of Mexico under that bill.<br /><br />Has anything been left out? Well for starters, as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/what-made-it-into-the-energy-bill/60517/">The Atlantic's Nicole Allan reports</a>, almost everything good that once was in the proposed Senate energy bill.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[I]t includes none of the grand, carbon-slashing measures that phrase called to mind just weeks ago. Instead, the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act is a modest, contained package that gives a curt nod to climate advocates but focuses on responding to the BP oil spill.</span></blockquote>Reid apparently couldn't get more than one measly Republican vote to assure that the original energy bill could be debated on the floor of the Senate. Together with the defection of a couple of ultra-conservative Democrats, that means he couldn't find the 60 votes out of 100 needed to defeat a threatened Republican filibuster.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. BP vs. U.S. Senate.</span><br /><br />No less than five friends and relatives sent me messages today pointing to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/opinion/28friedman.html?_r=1&amp;ref=opinion">Thomas Friedman's column which went on the web yesterday</a> and which appears in today's print edition of the Times. In sum, he says, the Senate is a bigger threat to the Gulf of Mexico coastal ecosystem than BP Corp.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">There are three things it should be doing for the gulf and our other vital ecosystems. First, taking out some minimal insurance against climate change by reducing our carbon emissions; this region is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and the more intense storms that climate change will bring. Second, set us on a path to diminish our addiction to oil so we don’t have to drill in ever-deeper waters. And, finally, provide the federal funding to restore America’s critical ecosystems. The Senate abandoned the first two but is still working on the third. </span></blockquote>To be clear, what Friedman means when he refers to the "Senate" is the minority of all Republican senators and two or three Democrats who are paid by the oil and coal industry to keep us addicted to carbon-based fuels until we choke on the carbon monoxide-fouled air or burn the planet to a cinder.<br /><br />Senator Reid isn't responsible for that minority of nay-sayers being in the Senate. We are. All of us.<br /><br />The voters in states like Louisiana, for example, who for years have sent mere tools of the oil industry to Washington to work assiduously for more offshore rigs and money -- and less barrier islands and beaches -- for that state. But the rest of us also share in the blame. We know too well how corrupt our election politics have become, yet we neglect to do anything about it.<br /><br />A coalition of environmental organizations <a href="http://www.wwfblogs.org/climate/sites/default/files/WWF%20Joint%20statement%20on%20failure%20of%20senate%20to%20pass%20a%20climate%20energy%20bill.pdf">released a joint statement</a> that puts the problem starkly:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">As we witness the worst industry‐caused environmental catastrophe in our history,<br />the deadliest coal mining disaster in 40 years, and sweat through the hottest first 6<br />months of any year on record, there’s never been a more urgent time to move<br />forward with a clean energy and climate policy.<br /><br />There’s no doubt that big oil, big coal, their army of lobbyists and their partners in<br />Congress are cheering the obstruction that blocked Senate action on clean energy<br />and climate legislation. Their cheers are cheers for China taking the lead in clean<br />energy jobs, the Middle East getting more of our money, and America getting more<br />pollution and fewer jobs.<br /><br />At every opportunity, a minority of Senators who are in the pocket of America’s<br />largest polluters in the coal and oil industries chose obstruction over working<br />together to solve America’s energy and national security challenges. As a result of<br />their actions, the big polluters will continue to reap record profits at the expense of Americans.</span></blockquote> Every decade for the last three decades has been <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/07/global-warming-undeniable-2000s-were-warmest-decade-on-record/1">a record-setter for global warmth.</a> <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128823662">Photo plankton that feed the fish in the world's oceans are disappearing</a>, mostly probably because of warming oceans. The fish won't be far behind.<br /><br />If all of that and the BP catastrophe, too, can't wake us up what will it take?Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com150tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-1655893083690475942010-07-27T07:37:00.007-05:002010-07-29T13:33:13.960-05:00Corporate Games Tuesday: July 27 BP Oil Spill Update<i>"To put Hayward's failure down to tone-deaf PR "gaffes" is to suggest that appearances matter more than reality; that the superficial trumps substance.</i>"<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">-------------</span><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7MkPN37TI/AAAAAAAAECw/6--ifbOWgck/s1600/10_0727_noaa-proj.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 304px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7MkPN37TI/AAAAAAAAECw/6--ifbOWgck/s400/10_0727_noaa-proj.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498557117998034226" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast</b><div><br /></div><div>Winds and water currents are projected to remain generally favorable "through Thursday," reads NOAA's surface oil forecast. However, as NOAA (above) and its Mobile Regional weather center are predicting for our locality, winds will be <a href="http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Gulf+Breeze&amp;state=FL&amp;site=MOB&amp;lat=30.369&amp;lon=-87.1762">light southwesterly and westerly</a>, for the most part. They will shift to a more welcome light northerly breeze by Wednesday.<br /><br />The forecast direction could be better, but it is the seasonal norm. The relatively "light" strength of the winds is favorable. By Thursday midnight, <a href="http://ocg6.marine.usf.edu/%7Eliu/Drifters/latest_ncom.htm">Ocean Circulation Group</a><a href="http://ocg6.marine.usf.edu/%7Eliu/Drifters/latest_ncom.htm">'s latest animation</a> shows offshore directional arrows coming at us from nearly every direction (screenshot below), albeit slowly and without much push.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7MSzv1lOI/AAAAAAAAECo/-NmXD-XDQeA/s1600/10_0727_ocean-circ-proj.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 289px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7MSzv1lOI/AAAAAAAAECo/-NmXD-XDQeA/s400/10_0727_ocean-circ-proj.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498556818566517986" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Corporate Games.</span></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>As predicted, BP's Tony Hayward is officially out effective October "by mutual agreement," <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10770252">BBC News announced this morning.</a> His reward? According to NPR this morning, a year's salary and benefits worth over $1.6 million million, an annual "pension pot" of at least $18 million which he can begin drawing at age 55, and a cushy "non-executive" job as director of its Russian joint venture.<br /><br /></div><div>That's more like an "up-fall" than a downfall. Everyone seems to putting it down to Hayward's "gaffes" and his failure at public relations. Rahm Emanuel, who plays Karl Rove to President Obama, even <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10360084">cracked this lame joke:</a> "I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting."</div><div><br /></div><div>This is maddening. Hayward's fundamental mistake was that he failed at his job of seeing that a major oil company went about its business competently and within the law. Instead, he was the man in overall charge of an entity that killed eleven employees, disturbed the lives and livelihoods of millions of innocent victims, and endangered all sea life in the Gulf of Mexico.<br /><br />To put Hayward's failure down to tone-deaf PR "gaffes" is to suggest that appearances matter more than reality; that the superficial trumps substance. Would we love Hayward any more after April 20 if he had uttered soporific apologies and cleverly conned us with false sympathy?<br /><br />Corporations do not sympathize with anyone. By law they have but one job: to make money for their shareholders.<br /><br />The current Supreme Court, <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/01/united-corporations-of-america.html">by a vote of 5 to 4</a>, may suppose that corporations are "persons" protected by our Constitution. If so, however, as Prof. Joel Balkan's work shows, they are deeply pathological 'persons' singularly interested in, and acting upon, one overriding desire. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Corporation-Mikela-J-Mikael/product-reviews/B0007DBJM8/ref=cm_cr_pr_redirect?ie=UTF8&amp;showViewpoints=0">Like any other sociopath on the street</a>, corporations want to get as much money as they can as fast as they can.<br /><br /><b>3. Hayward's Replacement. </b><br /><br />We should bear that point in mind as Robert Dudley ascends to Hayward's job. Yesterday, instead, New York Times reporters <a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/bp-is-expected-to-replace-chief-with-american/?scp=2&amp;sq=Jad%20Mouawad%20tony%20hayward&amp;st=cse">Jad Mo</a><a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/bp-is-expected-to-replace-chief-with-american/?scp=2&amp;sq=Jad%20Mouawad%20tony%20hayward&amp;st=cse">uawad and Cliffor</a><a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/bp-is-expected-to-replace-chief-with-american/?scp=2&amp;sq=Jad%20Mouawad%20tony%20hayward&amp;st=cse">d Krauss dutifully transcribed</a> without comment BP Corporation's hoped-for narrative in naming Dudley: <blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">The planned appointment of an American to run the London-based company... would underscore how vital the United States has become to BP. About one-third of the c</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">ompany’s </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">oil and gas wells,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> refineries and other busine</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ss interests.* * *</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">Mr. Dudley, 54, who grew up in Mississippi and spent s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">ummers fishing and swimming on the gulf, has been in charge </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">of BP’s respo</span><span style="font-size:85%;">nse to the spill</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> for the last month. Before that, he was best known for running the company’s joint ven</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">ture in Russia, where he butted heads </span><span style="font-size:85%;">in 2008 with BP’s bu</span><span style="font-size:85%;">siness partners and the Russian government over control of the operation.</span> </blockquote>As if a bucolic childhood or American citizenship makes any difference when working for an international corporation like BP. When one is employed by a pathological entity interested in just one thing, rearing and nationality mean nothing. Dudley's job isn't to be a good neighbor. His job is to achieve the corporation's singular objective without getting caught violating the law.<br /><div> </div><br />Focusing, as so much of the press has been doing, on Dudley's personality and lousy PR skills diverts our attention from substance to the superficial. Wake up, people. This isn't television, it's real life.<br /><br />As the <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100727/OPINION/7270301/1020/Editorial--Goodbye-Tony--hello----what?">Pensacola News Journal editorializes</a> today.<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[T]he environmental and</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> economic damage caused by BP — and the recent plunge in</span><span style="font-size:85%;">to the financial abyss led by the big banks and investment houses — should wake us all up to just how tied together we are. The idea that BP or other big companies can be safely left alone to work their market "magic" should have gone down in flames with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the incineration of the default credit swap era.<br />* * *<br />[R]egulations will never be an adequate replacement for the ac</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ceptance of eth</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ical and moral responsibili</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ty for th</span><span style="font-size:85%;">eir actions on the part of large corporations. At some point they must understand that making more money each quarter cannot be the end-all, be-all of their existence. The economy is supposed to be about people improving their lives, not cutting any moral, environmental or economic-risk corner that gets in th</span><span style="font-size:85%;">e way of next quarter's fiscal results.</span></blockquote><b>3. Boom status.<br /><br /></b> <div> </div> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE3VFPJWsJI/AAAAAAAAD_A/8VW-TF81kFY/s1600/10_0726_proj-green-heron.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 164px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE3VFPJWsJI/AAAAAAAAD_A/8VW-TF81kFY/s200/10_0726_proj-green-heron.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498285006031073426" border="0" /></a>We spent yesterday checking out a number of our favorite sites to see what changes, if any, the T.S. Bonnie emergency wrought.<br /><br />Some booms are back, like <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/04/friday-morning-gulf-oil-spill-update.html#greenshores">Project Greenshores' boom </a>in the northeast corner of Pensacola Bay (see left) and the booms protecting Dead Man's Island in Gulf Breeze (see below).<br /><br />Others yesterday morning at Bayou Texar were nowhere to be seen. On the beach, the boom was still not replaced at the entrance to Little Sabine Bay, in Lafitte Cove, and across Pensacola Pass.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE3_lFiImZI/AAAAAAAAD_g/t9G6wcSIxew/s400/10_0726_deadmanisisle.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 293px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498331732694833554" border="0" /> <div> </div> </div><div><b>4. BP Newtown.</b></div><br />One thing that's back in full force are all the clean-up workers. We found so many of them encamped on the beach along the road to Ft. Pickens that it looked like a new village. Call it BP Newtown.<br /><br />This is the new normal, apparently. To give you a sense of it, we tried to stitch together several photos of the scene we came upon just west of the entrance to Ft. Pickens National Seashore Park.<br /><br /><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7IfEJDs5I/AAAAAAAAECg/EDXWefsD1VM/s1600/10_0726_beach-mash.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 106px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7IfEJDs5I/AAAAAAAAECg/EDXWefsD1VM/s400/10_0726_beach-mash.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498552631079187346" border="0" /></a></div>Our editing skills are minimal and our tools are crude and ancient, so the result shows the stitching. But click on the photo above to get a sense for how the clean-up crews' tents stretch for nearly a mile along the shore, as if they had been newly platted for residential homes.<br /><br /><div> </div> <div style="text-align: left;"><b><a name="tarballs">5. Tarballs Ashore.</a></b><br /><br />We weren't surprised to come across vast piles of seaweed (properly, sargasso) washed up along Ft. Pickens' beaches (see below). This is expected after the vigorous surf we had last week.<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7SZoG_AsI/AAAAAAAAEDA/5ECKY-jYBpk/s1600/10_0727_ft-pick-sargasso.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7SZoG_AsI/AAAAAAAAEDA/5ECKY-jYBpk/s400/10_0727_ft-pick-sargasso.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498563532771230402" border="0" /></a>Click each photo to see a close-up.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7IEOE4_hI/AAAAAAAAECY/P2QIYLzFetc/s1600/10_0726_oilfat0731.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7G0t1y85I/AAAAAAAAECQ/7wCxBYK1yL0/s200/10_0726_tar-on-sargasso701.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498550804026684306" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7IEOE4_hI/AAAAAAAAECY/P2QIYLzFetc/s1600/10_0726_oilfat0731.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7IEOE4_hI/AAAAAAAAECY/P2QIYLzFetc/s200/10_0726_oilfat0731.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498552169889594898" border="0" /></a>What shocked us was all the oil evidence we found embedded in and around it. Oil tarballs cling to the sargasso and wash ashore with it. Perhaps a third of the individual weedy stalks we came across on a 2-mile stroll have oil clinging to them.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>Almost as frequently, we found the two -- oil and sea grass -- lying next to each other.</div></div><br /><div> <div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7GNR3dB5I/AAAAAAAAECA/AwaWlf1IPsk/s1600/10_0726_oil-stick_0720.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7GNR3dB5I/AAAAAAAAECA/AwaWlf1IPsk/s200/10_0726_oil-stick_0720.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498550126502545298" border="0" /></a></div> </div> Oil also is visible on beached driftwood and the seemingly ubiquitous plastic bottles that litter Gulf waters.<br /><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7Fo594WmI/AAAAAAAAEB4/jDBZKOOu6MY/s1600/10_0726_oilbottle0732.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7Fo594WmI/AAAAAAAAEB4/jDBZKOOu6MY/s200/10_0726_oilbottle0732.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498549501611760226" border="0" /></a>Unweathered, gooey oil tarballs with the tell-tale orange tint were as numerous as the black weathered tarballs. This tells us that much of the oil arrived underwater or is relatively new.<br /><br />On the beach, the visible tarballs ranged from about the size of a postage stamp to as wide and thick as the palm of an adult male.<br /><br />About a quarter mile west of the Ft. Pickens fishing pier, we happened upon a small group of divers. As they were emerging from the water, we asked if they'd spotted any underwater oil on their dive. "Don" said he'd seen "some" including one large tarball not far from shore. He gestured with his hands to demonstrate its size (below).<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7FJSvUMuI/AAAAAAAAEBw/_Pw6l7qV3P0/s1600/10_0726_manwx_740.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TE7FJSvUMuI/AAAAAAAAEBw/_Pw6l7qV3P0/s400/10_0726_manwx_740.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498548958505743074" border="0" /></a></span></div> </div><br /></div> That, too, looks like part of the "new normal" we on the Gulf Coast will be experiencing for a very long time to come.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-13023430063896422692010-07-25T06:19:00.005-05:002010-07-29T13:13:20.968-05:00Bye-Bye Tony Sunday: July 25 BP Oil Spill Update<b>1. Oilcast</b>.<br /><div><br />The <a href="http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/files/sit_reports/0710/situation_report87_072410.pdf">midday Situation Report issued yesterday</a> by the state of Florida noted: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The NOAA oil plume model shows the oil plume 90 miles from Pensacola, and 160 miles from Panama City. Florida is not expected to receive direct oil impacts through at least Monday, scattered tarball fields already nearshore may continue to be carried onshore along the panhandle coast.</span></blockquote>The state's situation report also announced that the "the removal of tier 1 and tier 2 boom has been halted."<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>2. Hayward Out at BP.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10753573">BBC is reporting this morning</a> that BP chief executive Tony Hayward is "negotiating his exit from the company." A formal announcement that he will soon <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/01/bp-ceo-tony-hayward-i%E2%80%99d-like-my-life-back/">have his life back</a> is expected in the next 24 hours.<br /><br />The BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10751128">also is reporting</a> that "Oil giant BP has confirmed it will begin drilling off the Libyan coast in the next few weeks." This culminates BP's three-year effort to <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/test-delay-wednesday-july-14-bp-oil.html#lockerbie">strong-arm the British government into agreeing</a> to release the convicted Lockerbie bomber and then muddling the international scandal <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/oily-opening-tuesday-july-20-bp-oil.html#lockerbie">by passing responsibility around like a hot potato.</a> </div><div><br /></div><div>During Hayward's tenure as Chief Executive Officer he managed to kill at least 11 of his employees, poison the Gulf of Mexico, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/business/energy-environment/13bprisk.html?_r=1&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;adxnnlx=1280055941-UmZDHY8pkbbOXGk8Z2AXsg">compile more than 700 safety violations at its Texas refinery</a>, <a href="http://www.antemedius.com/content/new-documents-employees-reveal-bps-alaska-oilfield-plagued-major-safety-issues">spill over 45,000 gallons of oil in Alaska</a>, and subvert the British justice system. </div><div><br /></div><div>How big an exit bonus do you suppose that earned him, according to the standards of today's corporate business world? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>3. Ships Return. </b></div><div><br />Also at midday yesterday, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen "ordered the ships that had left BP's broken well in the Gulf of Mexico back to the area so they could resume work as soon as possible." Rebecca Mowbray in todays' <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/ships_to_move_back_to_the_oil.html">New Orleans Times-Picayune</a> quotes him saying, "Within 24 hours we should have most of the vessels back on scene."</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/07/gulf-oil-spill-tropical-bonnie/1">USA Today summarizes</a> Allen's remarks at a press briefing as estimating "It could be Friday before workers can start "'static kill.'" Drilling of the relief well may not resume until Monday.<br /><br />Altogether, former T. S. Bonnie's feint toward the coast "cost BP a week of work in shutting down the well," Rebecca Mowbray reports.<br /><br /><b>4. Trop</b><b>ical Effects</b>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/24/1745666/work-resumes-on-capping-runaway.html">Cammy Clark of the Miami Herald writes</a> in a dispatch <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/24/98095/work-resumes-on-capping-runaway.html">also carried by McClatchy News</a> that the storm caused more like a "7- to 9-day delay in completing the ultimate fix" of a relief well. According to NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, however, "the storm's wave action of up to 8 feet in the northern Gulf will churn the oil, spreading what's left of the surface oil slicks and breaking tar balls up into smaller parts that will biodegrade more quickly."</div><div><br />Clark reports Lubchenco also gave it as her opinion that Bonnie's lingering effects in the Gulf "could drive some oil into marshes and bayous and onto beaches." Or, Lubchenco says, maybe "its counter-clockwise rotation also could move some oil away from the coastlines."<br /><br />That Jane Lubchenco. She's such a big help, isn't she?<br /><br /><b><a name="lubchenco">5. Go Fish</a></b>.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEvyNPnVpnI/AAAAAAAAD-o/A7suctHs6KA/s1600/10_0725_noaa-reopen-fish.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 154px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEvyNPnVpnI/AAAAAAAAD-o/A7suctHs6KA/s200/10_0725_noaa-reopen-fish.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497754079479572082" border="0" /></a>Late last week Lubchenco's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<a href="http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/sf/deepwater_horizon/reopening_july10.pdf"> announced the re-opening of 26,388 square miles</a> of the Gulf to commercial and recreational fishing. The NOAA press release says the reopened area constitutes "a third of the [previously] overall closed area." (<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEvyNPnVpnI/AAAAAAAAD-o/A7suctHs6KA/s1600/10_0725_noaa-reopen-fish.jpg">Click map, left</a>)<br /><br />The reopened area, however, is quite a haul from the northern Gulf coast. It lies some "190 miles southeast of the Deepwater/BP wellhead." NOAA says "the area where the majority of fishing will occur is about 220 miles from the wellhead, along the west Florida shelf." <div><br /></div>Lubchenco, whose credibility was damaged when she and BP <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-bp-oil-plumes,0,2578252.story">jointly "denounced" marine researc</a><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-bp-oil-plumes,0,2578252.story">hers'</a> early reports of undersea lakes of dispersed oil <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/subsea-saturday-july-24-bp-oil-leak.html#subsea">which later proved correct</a>, said in the statement released Thursday, "We are confident that seafood caught in this area is, and will continue to be, free from contamination."<br /><br />Or, knowing <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/06/noaas-lubchenco-world-is-out-of-step.html">Lubchenco's 'What Me Worry?' attitude</a>, maybe it won't.<br /><br /><b>6. Turtle Nest Rescue.</b><div><br /></div>A Mobile, Ala., citizen journalist at the experimental Examiner.com site <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEwfmK3miYI/AAAAAAAAD-4/bgrb_tA_aKE/s1600/10_0725_sean-dugas.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 114px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEwfmK3miYI/AAAAAAAAD-4/bgrb_tA_aKE/s200/10_0725_sean-dugas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497803985725589890" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-47892-Environmental-News-Examiner%7Ey2010m7d24-Gulf-oil-spill-wildlife-update-Kemps-ridley-sea-turtle-news-Gulf-Islands-Padre-Island-SeaWorld">reported yesterday </a>that "the first Kemp's ridley sea turtle nest was excavated" from Fort Pickens National Seashore Park two days ago. The delicate operation, "took place at 6:00 p.m. EDT on Friday as part of the multi-agency effort to retrieve thousands of turtle eggs from the Gulf Coast and relocate them... ." <div><br /></div><div>The eggs will be incubated at a secure NASA facility near Cape Canaveral. Once they hatch, the baby turtles will be released along the east coast of Florida. This should give them a better chance of survival than if they entered the Gulf waters polluted by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our own <a href="http://barrierislandgirl.blogspot.com/2010/07/sea-turtle-nest-relocation.html">Barrier Island Girl has a much more entrancing report</a> -- with lots of pictures, too. Everyone who is anyone in the local media was present (<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEwfmK3miYI/AAAAAAAAD-4/bgrb_tA_aKE/s1600/10_0725_sean-dugas.jpg">click above left</a>). As an added bonus, Barrier Island Girl has <a href="http://barrierislandgirl.blogspot.com/2010/07/postscript-to-nest-relocation.html">a stunning portrait of the mother Kemp's ridley turtle</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">But what's she doing in the middle of a blacktop road?</span><br /></div><div><br /><b>7. Registration for Primary Elections.</b><br /><br />Monday July 26 is the last day for Floridians to register as voters in the upcoming August 24 primary. <a href="http://www.escambiavotes.com/blog/2124472610-news-release-reminder-monday-is-voter-registration-deadline">Click here for information on how to register</a> -- including how to register by email.<br /></div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-5079374281781380972010-07-24T12:33:00.003-05:002010-07-25T04:09:35.016-05:00Subsea Saturday: July 24 BP Oil Leak Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TErfK5Nx8qI/AAAAAAAAD-A/9HR24FViEKY/s1600/10_0724_noaa-proj.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 312px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TErfK5Nx8qI/AAAAAAAAD-A/9HR24FViEKY/s400/10_0724_noaa-proj.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497451673409417890" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><br />As the latest NOAA oilcast graphic shows (above), the surface of BP's oil lake visible in satellite photos presently is being pushed away from the Florida panhandle and toward the northwest, fouling more of the coastline of Louisiana where <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/booms-away-thursday-july-22-bp-oil.html#oil">Bobby Jindal apparently welcomes it</a> as an economic growth strategy: <div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">Oil moving westward around the Mississippi Delta is collecting in the convergence line associated with the freshwater outflow -- this oil will continue moving westward threatening the Delta and shorelines west to Caillou Bay.</span></blockquote>That doesn't mean we're in the clear, of course. Westerly winds and currents can, and eventually will, push it back toward us just as easily.<br /><br /><b>2. Bonnie Gone.</b></div><div><br />Former Tropical Storm Bonnie lost its status as a tropical storm and became a mere tropical depression overnight. The <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2010/al03/al032010.public_a.008.shtml?">National Hurricane Center was saying early this morning</a>, "Bonnie could degenerate into an area of low pressure... Warnings will likely be discontinued later this morning."<br /><br />Two hours later <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2010/al03/al032010.public.009.shtml?">NHC discontinued all warnings</a>. Bonnie is gone. No storm, no depression, no Bonnie.<br /><br />Here in Northwest Florida we barely noticed anything except high clouds and a very few abbreviated rain squalls. We happened to be in north Pensacola late yesterday afternoon and were caught in one weird, violent burst of a dust storm, followed by a ten-minute downpour. That was it.<br /><br />By dinner time on the beach you could tell there had been enough rain to flood Via deLuna directly in front of the superior eatery, <a href="http://www.floridapizzakitchen.com/">Florida Pizza</a>. Then again, that often happens to this old section of Via deLuna, so it seems, even if there's been nothing more than a dewy morning.<br /><br /><b><a name="subsea">3. Subsea Oil.</a></b><br /><br /></div><div>As <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/06/pensacola-beach-walloped.html#don%27tsee">Enid Sisskin has warned</a>, danger lurks not just in the oil you see but in what you don't see.<a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/23/98088/researchers-confirm-subsea-gulf.html"> McClatchy News reports today</a>,"researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well... ."<br /><br />This is the first comprehensive and irrefutable proof of a "link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as 'plumes' and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday."<br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">The announcement came on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that its researchers have confirmed the existence of the subsea plumes at depths of 3,300 to 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf.<br />* </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">* *<br />Together, the two studies confirm what in the early days of the spill was denied by BP and viewed skeptically by NOAA's chief — that much of the crude that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon well stayed beneath the surface of the water.</span></blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEtsU-n0c3I/AAAAAAAAD-Y/g6YZY9-NiUk/s1600/10_0724_noaa-fluor.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 152px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEtsU-n0c3I/AAAAAAAAD-Y/g6YZY9-NiUk/s200/10_0724_noaa-fluor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497606877799019378" border="0" /></a>Most of the testing NOAA conducted was south of Louisiana, Mississippi, but at least one of the underwater plumes appears to be relatively close to Florida. "One layer was 100 feet thick; it was found 45 nautical miles north-northeast of the well site, officials said."</div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEr0GZliTmI/AAAAAAAAD-Q/HiqVkveoSak/s1600/10_0724_noaa-fluor.jpg"></a><div><br />One of the maps included in NOAA's 73-page report (<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEtsU-n0c3I/AAAAAAAAD-Y/g6YZY9-NiUk/s1600/10_0724_noaa-fluor.jpg">above left</a>) shows confirmed underwater plumes were discovered due south and about one longitudinal degree west of Pensacola. NOAA may not have tested east of there.<br /><br />At the University of South Florida, marine scientists' findings were said to be based on "water sampling using three separate technologies: an optical device that measures red backscatter; the ship’s sonar; and filtrations that trapped microscopic particles." <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Lab tests of these trapped particles confirmed in early June that the particles were microscopic oil droplets suspended at depth. The recent Compound-Specific Isotope Analysis (CSIA) further confirmed that these suspended oil droplets matched BP MC252 oil.</span></blockquote>A BP spokesman contacted by <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-bp-oil-plumes,0,2578252.story">the Los Angeles Times</a>, you will not be surprised to learn, pretended to complete ignorance:<br /></div><blockquote><div><span style="font-size:85%;">"We have only seen media reports, and have not yet seen the report and underlying data," BP spokesman Phil Cochrane said in an e-mail.<br /></span></div><div></div></blockquote><div>A scientist at the <a href="http://www.mote.org/">Mote Marine Laboratory</a> in Sarasota says "the finding is important because oil that escaped from the mile-deep, blown-out well had been treated with dispersants... . It's more readily taken up and absorbed and ingested by marine animals," says Richard H. Pierce, director of Mote's Center for Ecotoxicology.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Although dispersed oil degrades more quickly over the long-run, in the short-term, it poses a more toxic threat to marine life, Pierce said.</span></blockquote>The NOAA report is <a href="http://beta.w1.noaa.gov/sciencemissions/PDFs/JAG_Data_Report_Subsurface%20Oil_Final.pdf">available to everyone</a> (except, apparently, BP) <a href="http://beta.w1.noaa.gov/sciencemissions/PDFs/JAG_Data_Report_Subsurface%20Oil_Final.pdf">right here</a>. The <a href="http://ocgweb.marine.usf.edu/index.html">University of South Florida</a> report will be publicly released on Monday, McClatchy reports.<br /><br /><b>4. Asleep at the Switch </b><br /><br />The Coast Guard's hearings in Louisiana about what caused the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform are getting to be as exciting as Sam Ervin's Watergate hearings. Yesterday, Mike Williams, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/us/24hearings.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=all">New York Times reports</a>,who was "the rig’s chief electronics technician... said the general safety alarm was habitually set to 'inhibited' to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens and emergency lights."<blockquote> <span style="font-size:85%;">"They did not want people woke up at 3 a.m. from false alarms," Mr. Williams told the federal panel of investigators. Consequently, the alarm did not sound during the emergency, leaving workers to relay information through the loudspeaker system. </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> While it is not known whether it would have saved the workers who died in the April 20 disaster, the lack of a fully functioning alarm hampered the effort to safely evacuate the rig, Mr. Williams said.</span></p></blockquote>Williams also testified to "several new details about the equipment on the rig, testifying that another Transocean official had turned a critical system for removing dangerous gas from the drilling shack to 'bypass mode.'"<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">When Mr. Williams questioned that decision, he said he was reprimanded. </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> “No, the damn thing’s been in bypass for five years,” he recalled being told by Mark Hay, the subsea supervisor. “Why’d you even mess with it?”</span></p></blockquote>Other testimony at the hearing "addressed the role that shortcuts and mistakes played in compounding the rig’s troubles." These included mechanical errors, "390 repairs" left undone, and an incorrectly done test of emergency equipment that failed to detect a “kick of gas roughly an hour before the explosion."<br /><br /><b>5. Whither BP?</b><br /><br />Overall, the evidence is mounting that not one of the oil drilling companies involved is without serious fault. All conspired to create a criminally negligent hot-dog culture that not only killed eleven workers but which put all life in the Gulf of Mexico at risk.<br /><br />Can any of these leading corporations in the oil drilling industry survive the consequences of being caught? One expert we spoke with the other day was doubtful.<br /><br />"I had a Ph.D. student who's now a higher up in the industry," he told us. "He's a top notch guy. He says BP is hurting financially and he doesn't expect it to survive another two years."<br /><br />Derek Thompson for the estimable <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-23-reasonably-high-chance-bp-files-for-bankruptcy">Grist Magazine</a> found a bankruptcy wizard last month who agrees. "There is a reasonably high chance that BP could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the next few years, or even months," he said. "[T]he result would be an 'absolute horror' for the government... ."<br /><br />The prospect of a BP bankruptcy is not as crazy as you might think. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/08sorkin.html">Andrew Sorkin described why</a> six weeks ago:<br /><blockquote> <span style="font-size:85%;">BP’s costs for the cleanup could run as high as $23 billion, according to <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/credit_suisse_group/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More information about Credit Suisse Group A.G" class="meta-org">Credit Suisse</a>. On top of that, BP could face an additional $14 billion in claims from gulf fisherman and the tourism industry. So while conservative estimates put the bill at $15 billion, something approaching $40 billion is not out of the question. After all, little about this spill has turned out as expected.</span><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> The company has about $12 billion in cash and short-term investments, but there is already a debate about whether it should cut its dividend out of fear that it could run out of money. [It did - Beach Blogger] Of course, it could sell assets or seek loans, which in this environment is still not that easy.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>As <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bps-bankruptcy-would-impair-117-18-total-collateralized-synthetic-obligations-lead-pervasive">Zero Hedge Fund noted</a> over a month ago, watching BP's common stock price doesn't necessarily give the clearest picture of BP's financial status. Think credit default swaps, the very kind of risky investment instruments that was the undoing of some of Wall Street's biggest securities firms and insurance companies.<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[T]he real investing community is ever more carefully looking at the worst case, and its implications. Said implications would be vast, and in addition to wiping out billions in capital from BPs direct counterparties which are already limiting their BP exposure... would also impair indirect holders of pre-packaged securitized BP exposure.</span></blockquote>Claims against BP for its part in the oil spill catastrophe now <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/corporate-governance/109329-bp-hits-200-million-claims-mark">top $200 million</a>. While that's a long way from the $20 billion pledge for a compensation fund which the White House exacted from the company, apparently<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-21/bp-should-provide-details-of-20-billion-gulf-oil-spill-fund-lawyers-say.html"> no one has made public the actual documents</a> setting up the fund. In connection with pending lawsuits,<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-21/bp-should-provide-details-of-20-billion-gulf-oil-spill-fund-lawyers-say.html"> one federal judge has been asked to order a release</a> of the details.<br /><br />Today, fund administrator <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100724/ts_nm/us_oil_spill_fund">Kenneth Feinberg told an Alabama audience</a> that he is concerned that "British energy giant BP Plc is holding up payments to economic victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill." He says he thinks it's more about needing documentation than having ready cash. We shall see.<br /><br />Feinberg doesn't get his hands on the money until August. If then, we are tempted to say.<br /><br />As one financial expert noted fifteen years ago, "Seeking shelter under the umbrella of the federal bankruptcy court has become an increasingly common corporate strategy in recent years." Take a quick trip down's bankruptcy's memory lane:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Cases such as Texaco, Wilson Foods, Continental, and others are some examples of solvent corporations using Chapter 11 to stave off potential financial disasters. Texaco argued that it needed protection because of its inability to pay its liabilities, which included a $10.3 billion award to Pennzoil. Wilson Foods and Continental argued that they needed protection because their high labor costs were making them uncompetitive. Manville, UNR Industries, and Amatex sought protection because they were deluged with lawsuits for asbestos-related diseases.<br />* * *<br />Bankruptcy is no longer viewed as a last resort for insolvent companies, but is regarded as a strategy that can be used by financially solvent companies in an attempt to prevent potential financial disasters. An increasing number of financially sound companies have sought shelter under Chapter 11 not only to reorganize their present debts but also in order to renegotiate their liabilities, to void their contractual obligations, or to head off future liabilities. <center><br />Tavakolian, <a href="http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000362639">"Bankruptcy: An Emerging Corporate Strategy"</a>, 60 <span style="font-style: italic;">SAM Advanced </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Management Journal</span> 18 (1995) [full article by subscription only]</center></span></blockquote>The consequences of such a move by BP would be devastating for claimants and Gulf coast businesses expecting to recover their losses. The moment a bankruptcy petition is filed, all creditor claims pending in court would be frozen. As Tavakolian explained:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The court prohibits all creditors from pursuing the company pending a bankruptcy court's approval of a plan to restructure the company's financial obligations. The automatic stay gives the company temporary relief from collection attempts, lawsuits, and foreclosure procedures, thereby allowing the company to focus on its operations.</span></blockquote>Even if bankruptcy -- the now-common business strategy of so many capitalist enterprises -- isn't in BP's future, the most optimistic vision for the company isn't much prettier. "'BP will spend the coming decades circling the drain, mired in endless litigation, its reputation irreparably damaged, and its finances weakened," investment specialist Robert Bryce told Sorkin.<br /><br />Beside all the fishermen, businesses, and property owners just who, may we ask, is going to compensate the oiled sea turtles, pelicans, fish, oysters, crab, and seaweed for what BP did to them?<br /></div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-38270740688532393842010-07-23T13:06:00.001-05:002010-07-23T13:08:32.184-05:00Bonnie Be Good<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEnaKPhu8KI/AAAAAAAAD94/Ftcpp3VjdS8/s1600/10_0723_bonnie-spag-update.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 302px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEnaKPhu8KI/AAAAAAAAD94/Ftcpp3VjdS8/s400/10_0723_bonnie-spag-update.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497164689683968162" /></a>T.S. Bonnie is crossing south Florida right now and <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2010/al03/al032010.discus.005.shtml?">will enter the Gulf later today</a>. NHC's 11 a.m. discussion says:<br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The environment in the Gulf of Mexico is not favorable for any significant strengthening and in fact...global and hurricane dynamical models insist on weakening or even dissipating the cyclone gradually. Bonnie could degenerate into a tropical wave as it crosses Florida but the official forecast still shows some slight strengthening over the Gulf of Mexico.</span></blockquote>The latest satellite images, wind data, marine conditions, and more is available at <a href="http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lix/?n=embriefing">NOAA's New Orleans/Baton Rouge regional weather station.</a> Check in with <a href="http://www.hurricanecity.com/">Hurricane City</a> for Jim Williams' coverage.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-27360210195231205862010-07-23T11:33:00.003-05:002010-07-23T11:39:34.179-05:00Bonnie, Bonnie Friday: July 23 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEmSjBlDWoI/AAAAAAAAD9w/h95Nzg0YN9w/s1600/10_0723_spaghetti-mods.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEmSjBlDWoI/AAAAAAAAD9w/h95Nzg0YN9w/s400/10_0723_spaghetti-mods.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497085950599322242" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><br />The approach of Tropical Storm Bonny has "forced the evacuation of response vessels at the site of BP’s blown-out oil well, further stalling efforts to permanently seal the well," the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/us/24spill.html?_r=1&amp;hp">New York Times reports this morning</a>.<br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Among the vessels forced to flee the well site, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, was a drill rig that was working on a relief well, which is considered the ultimate way to seal the well.<br />* * *<br />The drill rig that was working on the relief well was most likely to be among the first to leave because it travels very slowly. Other ships that are better able to handle higher seas and travel faster would leave later, Admiral Allen said. Support ships for submersibles that have been monitoring the well would be among the last to leave, so the well would probably be unattended for only a few days, he said.</span></blockquote>The oil well itself will be "left closed off and unattended." It is expected there is "little risk" the 3-stack cap will "deteriorate" under pressure.<br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The decision to leave the well capped, which was made at the recommendation of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, means that scientists with the government and with BP think that the well is undamaged and that there is little risk it would deteriorate if kept under pressure, as it has been since valves on a new cap were closed a week ago. </span></blockquote> The National Hurricane Center is projecting that T.S. Bonnie will not likely grow to hurricane status. It is expected to near the Gulf coast late Saturday or early Sunday.<br /><br />Depending on how close the storm passes to the well and how long it takes to clear out, a BP spokesman estimates it will take 10 to 12 days to complete the relief well operation. This likely means a permanent solution to the long-running oil gusher will be pushed back to mid-August, and that's if everything goes well.<br /><br /><b>2. Bonnie, Bonnie Loch Ile.</b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100723/NEWS01/7230318/Beach-eyes-Tropical-Storm-Bonnie">Kimberly Blair reports for the local daily</a>, "Pensacola Beach officials are more worried about Tropical Storm Bonnie... stirring up dangerous rip currents than washing oil up on the beach."<div>Bonnie's prevailing cyclonic winds are likely to push BP's lake of oil -- which we're told a true <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm1BZnm-SIE">Scottish Bonnie would call </a><i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm1BZnm-SIE">loch ile</a></i> -- away from the Florida panhandle farther to the south and west.<div><br /></div><div>Good for us, bad for <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/booms-away-thursday-july-22-bp-oil.html#oil">Bobby Jindal's toxic pretend-barrier islands</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even T.S. Bonnie isn't likely to do much damage to Pensacola Beach, Blair's sources believe.<div><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">"By all indications, if it follows the projected path and crosses the Gulf on Saturday or Sunday and goes into Texas or Louisiana, we'll get some surf, no doubt," said Pensacola Beach Public Safety Supervisor Bob West. "The projected 40 mph or 50 mph winds, will only create 5 to 6 foot waves."</span><br /></blockquote>Just the kind of conditions surfers enjoy -- and in which unwary swimmers drown. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.hurricanecity.com/">Jim Williams at Hurricane City</a> has collected all the early morning computer-generated spaghetti forecasting models for Tropical Storm Bonnie. (See above) A near-contemporaneous <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2010/al03/al032010.fstadv.004.shtml?">public advisory</a> from the Hurricane Center, however, warns that "a tropical storm watch has been issued for the northern Gulf of Mexico coast from Destin... westward to Morgan City Louisiana."</div><div><br />This represents a slight shift to the east. This is the reason, as <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2010/al03/al032010.discus.004.shtml?">NHC explains in its discussion</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Bonnie is moving faster and has turned west-northwestward.* * * There is some spread in<br />the guidance after landfall along the northern gulf coast. The guidance is noticeably faster... which may be in part from the more westward initial location. The new NHC track is similar to the previous track but is faster than the previous advisory. This requires the issuance of tropical storm watches for a portion of the northern gulf coast. </span></blockquote>Still, Pensacola Beach is unlikely to be affected much, other than by higher waves, brisk but not particularly damaging winds, and starting today <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100723/NEWS01/100723001/Today-s-weather">"thunderstorms after 1 p.m."</a><br /><br /><b>3. Promotional Predicament. </b></div><div><br /></div><div>The predicament for Pensacola area businesses is apparent to all. The Island Authority's Bob West gave news reporter Blair a quote for the ages that encapsulates the dilemma facing us:</div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"The beach looks great, with the exception of sargassum and algae. The water is clear and is that beautiful blue. There's only a smattering of tar balls."</span></blockquote>Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>4. <i>"It's the Water."</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/21/epa-lies-bp-gulf-oil-spill-water-samples-exposed/">Alexander Higgins has serious questions</a> -- which is putting it mildly -- about EPA's assurances that its monitoring of Gulf seafood and water shows all is safe. Concerned over "obfuscated and poorly arranged" reports about the safety of Gulf water and seafood, he mashed up a number of EPA's sampling reports with local media stories about tests for <a href="http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/elements/v.htm">Vanadium, a naturally-occurring metal found in oil</a> which is a potential carcinogen but more commonly causes "bronchitis and pneumonia."<br /><br />According to Higgins Gulf Coast local media reports are far more accurate in showing contaminated water samples than EPA's own publicly-released test results. His summary about Pensacola Beach is typical of many of the other coastal localities he examined:<br /><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One of the most well known areas being devastated by the BP Gulf Oil Spill is Pensacola Beach Florida.<br /><br />Amazingly however the EPA reports only detecting on substance, Diesel Range Organics [C10-C28] in a water sample taken on May 9th, from all of the samples collected within 10 miles of Pensacola Beach.<br /><br />While the EPA data shows the beach is free of contamination that clearly isn’t the case and against advice of Federal scientists Pensacola Beach was reopened after being absolutely covered with oil in June. Over 400 people ended getting sick after swimming on the county beaches. </span></blockquote>We've previously mentioned that the "400" number is <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/come-to-jesus-friday-july-9-bp-oil.html#tarball">now said to have been an error</a>. But that shouldn't obscure Higgins' larger point that EPA test results released to the public are, on the whole, almost completely useless to the average citizen. They certainly appear to differ substantially from local media reports as well. </div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>EPA was heavily criticized for its supposed claims after 9-11 that New York City air was safe to breathe. However, the evidence for that is mixed as <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/groundzerositesafety,workerhealthissues">Google's own mash-up for 9-11 researchers shows</a>. But reason for doubts remain about the way in which EPA casts its air quality reports for public consumption. </div><div><br /></div><div>Higgins' work is useful, but hardly the last word on the safety of seafood and water in the Gulf. Except on this one point: EPA has a huge job ahead if it wants to regain the public's trust about its air and water quality reports. This can only be done if it finds a way to issue candid, detailed, and easily-explained public reports that give the average citizen meaningful information. </div><div><br /></div><div>EPA has made some progress in the last month. The new web site <a href="http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/">"EPA Response to BP Spill in the Gulf of Mexico"</a> is a start. It's easy enough to understand, too, if you have a college degree, can read the periodic table of elements, and have a copy of <a href="http://www.mercksource.com/pp/us/cns/cns_merckmanual_frameset.jsp">Merck's Manual</a> handy.<br /><br />Does anyone else think it's weird that Homeland Security can reduce the public notice about the terrorism threat level to <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.historycommons.org/events-images/a136_terror_alert_system_2050081722-16697.jpg&amp;imgrefurl=http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp%3Fentity%3Ddepartment_of_homeland_security&amp;usg=__j9m4MrhcogAdUY0s1O3f-weISe4=&amp;h=358&amp;w=335&amp;sz=44&amp;hl=en&amp;start=0&amp;sig2=9k0USaeP9s6NkshbVNkVbA&amp;tbnid=Z0Trkp8NEnAAqM:&amp;tbnh=173&amp;tbnw=162&amp;ei=1rtJTNPOFcWlOK2S4JYD&amp;prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhomeland%2Bsecurity%2Bwarning%2Bsystem%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D647%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&amp;itbs=1&amp;iact=hc&amp;vpx=150&amp;vpy=78&amp;dur=896&amp;hovh=232&amp;hovw=217&amp;tx=154&amp;ty=122&amp;page=1&amp;ndsp=15&amp;ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0">five colored-bar warnings</a>, yet EPA has yet to find a quick and accurate way to warn the citizenry at large where and when the water is unsafe for swimming or the seafood is inedible? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>5. Murzin Mirth. </b></div><div><br /></div><div>Pensacola News Journal columnist Mark O'Brien is fresh from <a href="http://www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20107160327">nearly finishing out of the money</a> in an Indianapolis horse race for 'funniest columnist.' At least he beat someone whose humorous entry was all about <a href="http://www.columnists.com/?p=4562">potty training</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>In <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100723/NEWS01/7230329/1037/COLUMNISTS01/Mark-O-Brien--Opponents-try-to-tag-Valentino">his allotted space today</a> O'Brien relates a remark recently made by now-candidate for county commissioner Dave Murzin. Murzin is freshly home from his own trip -- this one as state representative to Tallahassee, <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/whopper-wednesday-july-21-bp-oil-spill.html#murzin">where he made sure voters will have absolutely no say</a> about stiffening an offshore drilling ban to protect the state's beaches.</div><div><br /></div><div>According to O'Brien, "Murzin, a state representative from Pensacola, said he likes 'listening to people' and hearing others' opinions." </div><div><br /></div><div>Now <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> is hilarious! Mark deserves a first place prize from someone for that catch.</div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-56638116407022560102010-07-22T14:27:00.012-05:002010-07-23T11:32:31.338-05:00Booms Away Thursday: July 22 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEg3Xbql4DI/AAAAAAAAD9o/xIWtBOi-NPA/s1600/10_0722_wavcisproj.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 322px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEg3Xbql4DI/AAAAAAAAD9o/xIWtBOi-NPA/s400/10_0722_wavcisproj.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496704220908609586" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><br />No real change from <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/whopper-wednesday-july-21-bp-oil-spill.html#oilcast">yesterday's oilcast</a>. As <a href="http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/book_shelf/2335_TMF72-2010-07-21-2100.pdf">NOAA continues to forecast</a>, prevailing winds for the next three days will be "ENE/NE at 10-15 kts" and the "leading edge" of the oil lake poisoning the Gulf of Mexico will continue "to move north towards the Chandeleur Islands and northwestward towards the Mississippi Delta."<br /><br />Louisiana State University's <a href="http://www.csi.lsu.edu/">Coastal Studies Institute</a> graphically depicts this over the next five days (<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEg3Xbql4DI/AAAAAAAAD9o/xIWtBOi-NPA/s1600/10_0722_wavcisproj.jpg">click above</a>), showing relatively low surf and light winds over Pensacola coastal waters.<br /><br /><b><a name="tropical">2. Tropical Depression</a></b>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEgwVoTGy3I/AAAAAAAAD9g/_yyzWfgQlbs/s1600/10_0722_97L-79.gif"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 163px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEgwVoTGy3I/AAAAAAAAD9g/_yyzWfgQlbs/s200/10_0722_97L-79.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496696493358631794" border="0" /></a>Yesterday morning, <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/whopper-wednesday-july-21-bp-oil-spill.html#tropical">as we wrote</a>, NHC ranked the stormy disturbance in the Caribbean known as "97L" as having a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical storm or hurricane. Throughout the ensuing daylight hours, however, they lowered the chances to 60 and then 50 percent.<br /><br />This morning, we were back to 70 percent. (<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEgwVoTGy3I/AAAAAAAAD9g/_yyzWfgQlbs/s1600/10_0722_97L-79.gif">Click left.</a>) The center of the disturbance was about a thousand miles southeast of Pensacola this morning. <div><br /></div><div>Just before noon, <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2010/al03/al032010.discus.001.shtml?">the storm officially became a "tropical depression."</a> It has--<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">developed a surface circulation and enough organized convection to be classified as a tropical depression. The depression is sheared at this time and its center is located on the southwest side of a cyclonically curved convective band. The shear appears to be relaxing a little...however...as indicated by the motion of the high clouds on high resolution images. The cyclone is still interacting with a strong westward-moving upper low to the west. This pattern would only allow the depression to strengthen a little as indicated in the official forecast...but this forecast is uncertain. In fact... none of the models show significant intensification. </span></blockquote>A hurricane hunter was scheduled to take a closer look at it this afternoon, which NHC expects will help determine whether the depression has become Tropical Storm Bonnie.<br /><br /><b><a name="booms">3. Booms Away.</a></b><br /><br />Yesterday at mid-day worries over the storm caused Florida officials to order <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/storm-coming-booms-going.html">the removal of "Tier 3" booms previously installed</a> by local governments. Later the same day, the Unified Command ordered the dismantling of federally-authorized Tier 1 and Tier 2 booms as well.<br /><br />Jamie Page <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100722/NEWS01/7220313/Oil-booms-removed-for-storm">reports on all this</a> for the Pensacola News Journal [<a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100722/NEWS01/7220313/Oil-booms-removed-for-storm">"Oil Booms Removed for Storm"</a>]:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">About 47,000 feet of boom already has been removed from Escambia and Santa Rosa County waters since Tuesday, said Brooke Thorington, spokeswoman for the Joint Information Center in Mobile.<br />* * **<br />Not all boom is being removed; only boom in navigable waterways, environmentally sensitive areas, and safe harbor areas where boats in distress may need to go during a storm, [Brooke] Thorington said. Any additional boom to be removed will depend on the forecast.* * *<br /><br />The boom that is removed, and any associated equipment, will be temporarily stored in a secure location to protect it from weather-related damage and to protect fragile coastline from impacts caused by dislodged boom.</span></blockquote>If you're interested in the numbers, Page has them. "BP deployed about 481,000 feet of Tier 1 and 2 boom along the most sensitive areas of Florida's coast" and "316,261 feet of Tier 3 boom" which was added and now will be removed by local governments "from Escambia all the way to Franklin County."<br /><br />The boom is being removed by, among others, fishermen and "boaters with the Vessels of Opportunity program" as photo journalist <a href="http://www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?template=zoom&amp;Site=DP&amp;Date=20100722&amp;Category=NEWS01&amp;ArtNo=7220313&amp;Ref=AR&amp;Profile=1056">Gary McCracken documents today.</a> According to a state Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman, "After the tropical activity passes, should further oil spill impacts be projected, officials will redeploy the boom."<br /><br /><b><a name="oil">4. Oil Pollution as a Growth Industry.</a></b><br /><br />Consider this: all the millions upon tens of millions of dollars BP and local governments are expending to lay out new boom, take it up again, re-deploy it later, skim the oil, reimburse local businesses for tourism losses, etc. etc. etc. -- <i><b>all </b></i>of it eventually will make its way into calculations of the Gross National Product. <div><br /></div><div>Yes, it will help to show economic growth in these <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h3kgMAkbLwyfxBdjzw8Pc4KZ7DhQD9H40IL80">"unusually uncertain times."</a> But is it really "economic growth" when we commit vast sums of money to polluting the Earth and then spend more vast sums trying to clean up the mess we've made?<br /><br />Some Louisiana residents seem to think so. Yesterday in Lafayette, Louisiana -- the heart of the Gulf Coast oil drilling industry -- <a href="http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/98988264.html">"thousands" rallied to demand more deepwater drilling in the Gulf</a>. Can you believe it? They want to risk <span style="font-style: italic;">repeating</span> this catastrophe!<br /><br />The gathering was political, of course. "The rally... featured speeches from elected leaders, along with representatives from the oil, restaurant and seafood industries."<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Lt. Gov. Scott Angelle served as master of ceremonies and fired up an already lively crowd, proclaiming that “It is time to quit punishing innocent American workers to achieve some unrealistic political agenda.”</span><br /></blockquote>As if Angelle, himself, doesn't have an even more "unrealistic political agenda."<br /><br />Just yesterday, we were speaking with an academic expert on the Gulf of Mexico who lives in Louisiana. He is beside himself with fury over the response of Governor Bobby Jindal, Angelle, and other politicians to the ongoing devastation of the state's coastal habitat.<br /><br />"We’re in the middle of a war to defend our way of life,” Jindal speechified yesterday.<br /><br />And that's the problem, our friend says. Instead of leading the way to develop industries founded on clean solar energy, which he says could create as many or more jobs in the state, Louisiana's present political leadership is trying to hang on to the old way that "is destroying the globe." Our friend explained:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Jindal is making a big deal out of building up barrier islands. Unfortunately, the media buys it. What he's really doing is dredging up polluted sediments from past mistakes by the industry and the Corps of Engineers and spreading them all over the coast. In one instance I've seen, Jindal created a mile and a half of nothing but polluted rubble. It's insane.</span></blockquote>If the BP oil spill demonstrates anything, it is that we can no longer allow a single state, nation, or industry to preserve "a way of life" that is killing the planet. When that way of life risks poisoning the Gulf of Mexico and destroying the chain of life in our oceans, we need to find new political and business leaders who have the foresight and fortitude to set us on the path to a newer, more sustainable way of life.<br /><br /><b><a name="academic">5. Academic Free-for-All.</a></b><br /><br />Academics like our friend may not be popular with the pols, but they're in high demand by oil industry corporations -- and by victims who are hoping to get proper compensation for the losses BP has caused them.<br /><br />We've previously made light about <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/bp-board-game-wednesday-july-7-bp-oil.html#boardgame">the rush to monopolize expert witnesses</a>. But, really, it's no laughing matter.<br /><br />Ben Raines of the Mobile Register is the lead reporter in the nation on this subject for the moment. [See <a href="http://blog.al.com/live/2010/07/bp_buys_up_gulf_scientists_for.html">"BP Buys Up Gulf Scientists for Legal Defense, Roiling Academic Community,"</a> July 16.] Travis Griggs is out in front on the Florida university angle.<br /><br />Last week, Raines reported:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation.<br /><br />BP PLC attempted to hire the entire marine sciences department at one Alabama university, according to scientists involved in discussions with the company's lawyers.<br />* * *<br />More than one scientist interviewed by the Press-Register described being offered $250 an hour through BP lawyers. At eight hours a week, that amounts to $104,000 a year.<br /><br />Scientists from Louisiana State University, University of Southern Mississippi and Texas A&amp;M have reportedly accepted, according to academic officials. Scientists who study marine invertebrates, plankton, marsh environments, oceanography, sharks and other topics have been solicited.</span></blockquote>A hundred G's annually is a bonus worthy of a Wall Street banker, never mind some poorly paid, obscure faculty member wearing a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. The catch is, BP's "research" contracts require the academics to remain mum about the data they collect and the results they obtain for at least three years.<br /><br />Yesterday, <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100721/NEWS01/7210335/1056/NEWS10/BP-snubs-scientists-at-state-schools">Griggs reported that something close to the opposite </a>is happening to Florida academics:<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Researchers at Florida universities say BP has not offered them the lucrative research contracts it reportedly has offered to other universities in exchange for scientists' cooperation with its legal defense.</span></blockquote> One well might consider that high acclaim, indeed, for Florida's universities. As Dick Snyder of the University of West Florida told Griggs, "I think we're looking at [BP] trying to control information about an environmental catastrophe." To resist the enormous pressure BP can bring to bear on the university system is admirable.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Nondisclosure agreements are common when universities partner with private industries for research and development or product testing, "but in this case, I think we're looking at something different than that," Snyder said.<br /><br />"If you're working on some new chemical product they come up with, then yeah, we'll sign a (nondisclosure agreement) and help them with their research and development. ... But (this) is really pushing the edge of it. It's not a product the company is working on. What's the basis for the nondisclosure?"</span></blockquote>W. Ross Ellington, head of the Oil Spill Academic Task Force at Florida State University, told Griggs:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">"The only time we would withhold research data is if we want to publish before our competitors publish. But in this case, because it's so important, the free dissemination is going to be very important." </span></blockquote>Our own coastal scientist friend says that in Louisiana and Mississippi it's become an "academic free-for-all" as faculty, staff, and independent researchers try to climb aboard the BP money wagon without getting polluted by the money.<br /><br /><b><a name="mcuniversity">6. McUniversity.</a></b><br /><br />The problem is hardly new to academia or industry. Books have been written on what has come to be known as the rise of <a href="http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&amp;st=sl&amp;qi=bfjBhNIvxDNDAcHWMRM5URAAHBo_9702578365_1:767:1558&amp;bq=author%3Dsheila%2520slaughter%26title%3Dacademic%2520capitalism%2520and">"Academic Capitalism,"</a> sometimes less charitably known as "McUniversity," after <a href="http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&amp;st=sl&amp;qi=o6fLPTbiCUCT0a1s0NTg0NkXPS4_3047364081_1:32:605&amp;bq=author%3Dgeorge%2520ritzer%26title%3Dmcdonaldization%2520of%2520society">George Ritzer's famous neologism</a>.<br /><br />The reasons are not complicated, either. As one student of the sociology of science put it a few years ago, citing two other pioneers who saw the same conundrum:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">On the one hand, in order to remain competitive in global markets, companies increasingly seek for new knowledge and science-based products and processes from universities. On the other hand universities need new sources of income, as state funding for higher education has been diminishing. Thus "the corporate quest for new products converged with faculty and institutional searches for increased funding."<br /><br /><center>Oli-Henlenya Ylijoki, <b>"Entangled in Academic Capitalism?<br />A Case-study on Changing Ideals and Practices of<br />University Research,"</b> 45 <span style="font-style: italic;">Higher Education</span> 307 (2003)</center></span></blockquote>In other words, we've brought this on ourselves. For industry it's money, money, money. Nothing new about that. But for academics, the need is driven by the "diminishing" financial support by our political organs for public colleges and universities.<br /><br />Our coastal science friend says all corporate research grants are "dirty money." But he sees nothing unethical in a scientist contracting to work as an expert witness so long as he or she has the integrity to observe traditional academic values, does all the research necessary (rather than merely that which would support a preconceived viewpoint), and presents conclusions objectively and without favor.<br /><br />Ah, but there's the rub. What litigant wants an expert witness who will be <span style="font-style: italic;">fair</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">impartial</span>? In Florida, our own attorney general was merely following the industry standard when he <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/05/1664521/records-show-attorney-general.html">hired a self-loathing crackpot at twice the normal fee to testify against his own gay proclivities.</a> Watch what he says, not what he does.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oil company litigants want an expert who shares their view of the case and who has the scientific fire-power to win it for them. None of them are in the business of paying "a fair and impartial" researcher for his time and expense in offering research results to a court or the public at large. </div><div><br /></div><div>The whole mess is something important that remains unresolved. That's why our coastal scientist friend also says, "If the money isn't from the National Science Foundation, it's dirty."<br /><br /><b><a name="rapid">7. Rapid Response System.</a></b><br /><br />One way to alleviate, though perhaps not completely solve the problem, is suggested by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/energy-environment/22response.html?scp=6&amp;sq=shell%20oil&amp;st=cse">yesterday's news</a> that "four of the world’s biggest oil companies" have committed "$1 billion to create a rapid-response system to deal with deepwater oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico... ."<br /><br />Of course these mega-corporations aren't ponying up a quarter of a billion dollars, each, out of eleemosynary motives. They want to burnish their public image and "restore public confidence in the industry after the BP disaster painfully exposed how unprepared the industry was for a major accident."<br /><br />The plan is to jointly create "a new nonprofit entity, called the Marine Well Containment Company" which would "be in charge of operating and maintaining" an emergency capability of responding to broken well or other oil spill emergencies. <blockquote> The entity, modeled in part after the Marine Spill Response Corporation, which was set up after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, will also finance research to look into new ways of tackling an underwater spill.<br />* * *<br />"Companies have used their technology to get into the deep water but they didn’t have an adequate plan to intervene at these depths or to contain a large-scale spill,” [an energy expert says].</blockquote>This joint "nonprofit" project obviously will be dominated and run by Big Oil. But something along similar lines-- a research grant foundation funded by oil companies but run by, say, institutional representatives from Gulf Coast universities and the <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/">National Science Foundation</a> -- just might work as a joint funding source and distribution agent for academic oil pollution research grants supporting coastal studies, sea life damage, and coastal restoration research.</div><div><br /></div><div>While it wouldn't entirely eliminate the ethical challenge facing academics working for industry, it has the potential to relieve a large part of the problem, if done right. One might even dare hope that it could eventually lead to eliminating the threat oil leaks -- or even our own petroleum dependency -- pose for the planet.<br /><br /><b><a name="oilmen">8. (Oil) Men at Work. </a></b><br /><br />More than seventy percent of all Floridians <a href="http://saintpetersblog.com/2010/07/19/new-poll-71-of-florida-voters-want-vote-on-banning-oil-drilling/">want to see a drilling ban constitutional amendment on the ballot.</a> That makes no difference to state representatives <strike>Greg Evers</strike> Dave Murzin (a candidate for <strike> Santa Rosa </strike> <a href="http://progressivepensacola.com/2010/05/07/6916/">Escambia county commissioner</a>) or Clay Ford. They're hard at work making sure that the people have no voice in this democracy.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's<a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100722/OPINION/7220301/1020/Editorial--Political-theater-as-farce"> "political theater as farce,"</a> the Pensacola News Journal editorializes today:<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[B]oth representatives voted last year for a bill that would have ended the legislative ban on drilling in Florida waters — an effort that died in the Senate when the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico.</span></blockquote> The paper rightly points out that "House Republicans weren't serious" from the get-go about letting voters have a voice in the matter. In coming up with such<a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/whopper-wednesday-july-21-bp-oil-spill.html#whoppers"> transparent, outright lies to justify their own actions</a> in denying a meaningful voice to the people of Florida, Murzin and Ford have disgraced their public office and betrayed the voters who sent them to Tallahassee. </div></div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-3753096970313084372010-07-21T10:48:00.002-05:002010-07-21T10:56:38.861-05:00Storm Coming, Booms GoingLate this morning the State Emergency Response Team announced the temporary "removal of supplemental Tier 3 boom within the next 72 to 96 hours in the Panhandle counties." In a formal statement [<a href="http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/files/072110_tropical_activity.pdf">available here</a>], it is said:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The removal is in light of the potential tropical activity in the Gulf of Mexico.<br /><br />“During a tropical storm boom can cause additional damage to the natural resources that we are trying to protect from oil spill impacts,” said [state] DEP Secretary Michael W. Sole. “Given the current oil spill trajectories and the tropical activity in the Gulf of Mexico we think this is the best decision for Florida’s communities.”<br />* * *<br />Following the tropical activity, should further oil spill impacts be projected, officials will redeploy the boom.</span></blockquote>"Tier 3" boom are those deployed by state and local governments at their own expense in areas additional to sensitive coastline areas approved by the Unified Command under the U.S. Coast Guard’s Area Contingency Plan (ACP).<br /><br />No appreciable change has been made in <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/whopper-wednesday-july-21-bp-oil-spill.html#tropical">the earlier forecast</a> of the National Hurricane Center.<a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/gtwo/atl/201007211134/index.php?basin=atl&amp;current_issuance=201007211134"> It continues to state</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">A tropical depression is not expected to form today but environmental conditions are still favorable for some development as the system moves toward the west-northwest at about 10 mph away from Hispaniola into the Bahamas on Thursday. There is a high chance...60 percent...of this system becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours.</span></blockquote><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-21/caribbean-weather-system-less-likely-to-strengthen-hurricane-center-says.html">Bloomberg News reported at mid-morning</a> that "heavy rain showers over the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico" were diminishing the chance of strengthening. But Bloomberg also quotes a meteorological consultant for businesses as predicting that Invest 97L would become a Category 1 "by the weekend."<br /><br />If so, the next <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml">tropical storm name on the list</a> is "Bonnie." We have a good friend by the same name. She's a gentle, humorous soul who wouldn't hurt a sand flea. We'll take that as a good omen.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-2096161673346554712010-07-21T08:09:00.006-05:002010-07-22T06:57:17.374-05:00Whopper Wednesday: July 21 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEa3rKj6kxI/AAAAAAAAD9A/LWua1p3sy7M/s1600/10_0721_noaa-oil-forecast.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 302px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEa3rKj6kxI/AAAAAAAAD9A/LWua1p3sy7M/s400/10_0721_noaa-oil-forecast.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496282347449520914" border="0" /></a><b><a name="oilcast">1. Oilcast</a></b>.<br /><br />If you want to beach it, the next several days look like the surest opportunity for a pleasant, relatively oil-free time in weeks. NOAA reports (see above) that overflights at BP's well site "indicate the surface oil is breaking up into numerous patches separated by clean water - for the first time no surface oil was observed in the vicinity of the source."<br /><br />Locally, NOAA expects wind and wave forecasts (below) will be pushing comparatively cleaner water westward over the next 72 hours.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEa4_Rscs3I/AAAAAAAAD9I/9h_Uk4sJIig/s1600/10_0721_noaa-windwave72hr.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 169px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEa4_Rscs3I/AAAAAAAAD9I/9h_Uk4sJIig/s400/10_0721_noaa-windwave72hr.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496283792473371506" border="0" /></a><a name="tropical"><b><a name="tropical">2.Tropical Report.</a></b></a><br /><br />Get that beach experience in before the weather turns next week. The National Hurricane Center is now saying "there is a high chance... 70 percent" of Invest 97L "becoming a tropical depression or a tropical storm during the next 48 hours."<br /><br />Right now, the slow-moving system is north of Puerto Rico and soon will be passing the Dominican Republic. The <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/20/1739046/national-hurricane-center-watching.html">Miami Herald reports</a>, "strong winds and heavy rain" are expected in south Florida by late Thursday.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEa0deWg1BI/AAAAAAAAD84/hm3O_jz2OTM/s1600/10_0721_hurrspagh.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEa0deWg1BI/AAAAAAAAD84/hm3O_jz2OTM/s200/10_0721_hurrspagh.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496278813708964882" border="0" /></a>All the early computer-generated spaghetti projections (left) have the storm heading into the Gulf. After that, they come up with a wide scattering of potential targets ranging from Morgan City, Louisiana to Apalachee Bay, Florida. Pensacola Beach, wouldn't you know it, is just about in the middle.<br /><br />A hurricane hunter aircraft will be gathering more detailed data later today.<br /><br /><b><a name="whoppers">3. Oily Legislators Spin Whoppers.</a></b><br /><br />Gannett Corp.'s capital bureau in Tallahassee covered yesterday's abortive special session of the legislature, called by Governor Charlie Crist to consider placing a referendum on the November ballot that would have banned drilling off the Florida coast. A constitutional amendment is believed necessary as an additional bulwark against future sneak attacks on the existing statutory ban against near-shore drilling which the state has enjoyed for many years.<br /><br />There once was a time when that drilling ban enjoyed broad bipartisan support. But the extremists who have taken over the state's Republican party were on the verge last April of repealing that statute when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew up, exposing the folly of their plans.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100721/NEWS01/7210336/Oil-spill-GOP-tables-offshore-drilling-ban">Jim Ash's report today from Tallahassee</a> reveals -- surprise, surprise -- that local legislators are saying one thing to the home folk and doing another in the state capital. Yesterday, <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/florida-gop-subverts-drilling-ban.html">every single Republican in the state House of Representatives</a> voted to adjourn the special session after only 49 minutes without even taking up or debating the governor's proposal.<br /><br />Yet, for the consumption of folk back home, state representatives Clay Ford (R-Gulf Breeze) and Dave Murzin (R-Pensacola) are spinning big whoppers to create the impression they were "disappointed... there was much left undone with regards to oil drilling in the Gulf."<br /><br />Ford is particularly oily. About Governor Crist's proposal, he claims, "I was in favor of putting it to a vote. I would have voted to put it on the ballot in November."<br /><br />If that were so, then why would he vote to adjourn the special session before the proposal even could be raised? Ford isn't saying. He doesn't have to. His actions speak louder than words. For Clay Ford, party loyalty trumps protecting his constituents from environmental catastrophe.<br /><br />Murzin, too, voted in lock-step with the Republican statehouse leaders to deny voters a chance to vote on the constitutional referendum. This is the same leadership behind the sneak attack last April to revoke the long-standing offshore drilling ban.<br /><br />The excuse Murzin is offering is risible. He claims the offshore drilling ban "might have unintended consequences on the inland oil production in Santa Rosa County known as the Jay Fields." The Jay Fields, which are nearing depletion anyway, are located well inland -- <a href="http://search.datapages.com/data/open/offer.do?target=%2Fspecpubs%2Ffieldst1%2Fdata%2Fa011%2Fa011%2F0001%2F0250%2F0276.htm">35 miles north of Pensacola.</a><br /><br /><b><a name="murzin">4. Murzin's Mendacity.</a></b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEbo9UvBVkI/AAAAAAAAD9Y/oWsNDMltDjU/s1600/10_0721_portoffino-tower.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 180px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEbo9UvBVkI/AAAAAAAAD9Y/oWsNDMltDjU/s200/10_0721_portoffino-tower.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496336535487862338" border="0" /></a>Dave Murzin wouldn't want you to know this, but the exact wording of the proposed resolution that would have put the drilling ban issue on the ballot<a href="http://flhouse.gov/Sections/Documents/loaddoc.aspx?FileName=_h0037C__.docx&amp;DocumentType=Bill&amp;BillNumber=0037C&amp;Session=2010C"> is here, in the underlined language</a> starting on page 2.<br /><br />It would have added to Article II, Section 7 ("Natural resources and scenic beauty") the following new subsection (boldface added):<br /><blockquote style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:85%;">(c) The exploration and drilling for, and the extraction and production of, oil are prohibited in and beneath all state waters located between the mean high-water line along the coastline of the state and the seaward limit of the state's boundaries, as now or hereafter fixed by this constitution or the Congress of the United States, whichever such boundary is farther from the coastline. This prohibition shall not apply to the transportation of oil produced outside of such waters.</span></blockquote>What do you suppose it is about the phrases <a href="http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20Statutes&amp;SubMenu=1&amp;App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;Search_String=mean+high+tide&amp;URL=CH0161/Sec55.HTM">"mean high water line"</a> or<a href="http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20Statutes&amp;SubMenu=1&amp;App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;Search_String=mean+high+tide&amp;URL=CH0161/Sec55.HTM"> "seaward limit"</a> that confuse state representative Murzin? The nearby Jay airport has <a href="http://www.city-data.com/airports/Jay-Airport-Jay-Florida.html">an elevation of 254 feet above sea level</a>. The Jay Field will be inside the mean high tide line of Florida about a week after the surf begins washing over the top of Portofino Towers.<br /><br />Murzin may or may not be rock-stupid, but apparently he thinks the voters are.<br /><br /><b><a name="ad">5. Ad for Tourism Promotion.</a></b><br /><br />In today's News Journal, reporter Jamie Page covers the YouTube video recently produced by the Appleyard ad agency to promote local tourism in the midst of the BP oil spill. The ad was produced for <a href="http://www.visitpensacola.com/">the tourist promotion arm</a> of the Pensacola Bay Chamber of Commerce.<br /><br />The title of Jamie Page's article is <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100721/NEWS01/7210334/1006/NEWS01/Ad-spins-beach-bummer-into-fun-summer">"Ad Spins Beach Bummer into Fun Summer."</a> After Gannett's self-defeating web policy disappears the article behind a cumbersome and expensive archival system, you can still <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcrvJAK-0As&amp;feature=player_embedded">see the video for free on YouTube</a>.<br /><br />The ad is supposed to be a semi-comic look at oil cleanup workers enjoying the tourist sites around town. The video, Page reports, hasn't actually been placed yet for paid broadcast anywhere --<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">but it saw some major publicity over the weekend by "NBC Nightly News" and the "Today" show before it was posted Monday on YouTube. It is now on MSNBC's website. If the video gets a positive reaction from the public, then Visit Pensacola likely will turn it into a 30-second television commercial... .</span></blockquote>In other words, it's a work in progress. Viewer reactions are being sought.<br /><br />Now, we have no expertise whatsoever in advertising or marketing. Over the years, we've worked diligently to develop a constitutional immunity against advertisements of every kind.<br />Never read 'em, never watch 'em. Couldn't tell you what feminine hygiene deodorant or erectile dysfunction drug we're supposed to be using, or what anti-depression medication we should be demanding our doctor give us.<br /><br />The story line of the Visit Pensacola ad, according to its producer, is supposed to use "these negative images [people] have seen and... show them in an absurd light and make them funny and use them to our advantage to show all the fun things to do in Pensacola."<br /><br />Does it work? <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEbJZTOpl_I/AAAAAAAAD9Q/f0l04eXxP8c/s1600/10_0721_visit-pecola-video.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 138px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEbJZTOpl_I/AAAAAAAAD9Q/f0l04eXxP8c/s200/10_0721_visit-pecola-video.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496301831747901426" border="0" /></a>Our guess is the ad will appeal to locals who know how the BP clean-up workers' hazmat suits look and who will recognize film clips taken around town -- bicycling down South Palafox (good luck with that!), Fort Pickens, the Naval Aviation Museum at N.A.S., the Lighthouse, the war memorial, and so on.<br /><br />Personally, however, we can't imagine distant viewers appreciating the humor or figuring out what the images depict. One of the scenes (above left) even looks to us like the clean-up workers are about to mug some doofus on the street.<br /><br />As we say, however, we don't know anything about advertising. You, dear reader, whoever you are know more than we do. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcrvJAK-0As&amp;feature=player_embedded">Go to the YouTube page</a> and leave your comment for the benefit of all the Pensacola Beach tourist businesses who have been wrecked by BP's criminal negligence.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-20798286189254278812010-07-20T14:20:00.002-05:002010-07-20T16:34:08.871-05:00Florida G.O.P. Subverts Drilling BanThe Florida House of Representatives today met for 49 minutes and then adjourned without even considering whether to give voters the chance to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment against oil drilling.<br /><br />The vote was <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/20/1738869/party-line-vote-ends-floridas.html">44 Democrats in favor of letting voters decide</a> and all 67 Republicans against it.<br /><br />That's helpful, in a way. Now, it will be easy to tell whom to vote for. If you see a Florida Republican office holder you know <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/drilling-for-dollar-sunday-july-11-bp.html#drilling">he is for oil spills and against democracy</a>. The party-line vote made it simple as that.<br /><br />Although the state Senate remains in session as this is written, by adjourning House Republicans made sure voters will not have a chance to vote on the issue in November.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-5103213409382227072010-07-20T13:28:00.009-05:002010-07-25T05:49:39.430-05:00Oily Opening Tuesday: July 20 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEXkm7OSkHI/AAAAAAAAD8w/OOTehu_lHtI/s1600/10_0720_noaaforecast.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 249px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEXkm7OSkHI/AAAAAAAAD8w/OOTehu_lHtI/s400/10_0720_noaaforecast.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496050277659349106" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><br />NOAA's 72-hour oilcast map, above, dramatically shows how persistent southeast winds are likely to push BP's oil back where it belongs, off the shores of <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/poll-louisiana-loves-bobby-jindal----and-offshore-drilling.php">Bobby Jindal's drill-happy Louisiana</a>. They want it? They can have it.<br /><br />Probably based on the same data, the <a href="http://www2.jcfloridan.com/news/2010/jul/20/no-oil-expected-hit-beaches-week-ar-599987/">Jackson County Floridian reports:</a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">No additional oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill will wash up on the Panhandle and other Florida beaches, because of a combination of westerly [sic] winds and the newly-capped gusher, state officials say.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">If the favorable weather holds, no oil sheens are expected to stain Pensacola’s sugar-white beaches for at least a week, Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Sole said at a news conference this morning.<br /><br />“Most of the oil is significantly offshore—about 85 miles,” Sole said. “There are no expected impacts to Florida shorelines this entire week. Still, we’re going to be ready ... until all this oil is gone.” </span></blockquote>On the other hand, <a href="http://www.thegovmonitor.com/">The Gov Monitor</a>, which also has offices in Florida as well as overseas, <a href="http://www.thegovmonitor.com/world_news/united_states/florida-outlines-bp-gulf-oil-spill-response-for-july-20-2010-35856.html">reports a darker possibility today:</a><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Isolated impacts of crude oil tar balls and tar patties are expected to continue in Northwest Florida over the next 72 hours.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> State reconnaissance teams operating by air, land and sea continue to identify potential impacts and are actively coordinating with cleanup teams.</span></blockquote>However, the web site's own <a href="http://map.floridadisaster.org/gator/">interactive map</a> indicates no new reports of oil coming ashore have been received as yet.<br /><br />Probably, the truth is they're all correct. The main oil slicks are going to be nudged west again while some of the oil tarballs already off the Northwest Florida coast could stop circling out at sea and come ashore in the surf. It shouldn't be much, but any amount is too much.<br /><br />By all means, come to the beach but avoid the odd looking stones and pretty little orange spongy-looking things. They're toxic.<br /><br /><b>2. Tropical Points of Interest</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEXiht_YRpI/AAAAAAAAD8o/_o2PH70ixlo/s1600/10_0720_invest97L.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEXiht_YRpI/AAAAAAAAD8o/_o2PH70ixlo/s200/10_0720_invest97L.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496047989184546450" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.hurricanecity.com/predictions.htm">Jim Williams at Hurricane City is predicting</a> a tropical storm named "Bonnie to form S.E of TX/LA as a minimal tropical storm setting the stage for next week." Right now, the Hurricane Center is watching "Invest 97L," just passing Puerto Rico.<br /><br />"There is a high chance... 60 percent... of this system becoming a tropical depression or storm during the next 48 hours," the National Hurricane Center says.<span style="font-family:monospace;"><br /><br /></span><b>3. Well well enough?</b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/gas_seeps_not_necessarily_a_pr.html">New Orleans Times-Picayune</a> reports, "Scientists have discovered four gas "seeps" at or near BP's blown-out Macondo well since Saturday... .<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Bubbles have been spotted on the seabed about three kilometers away from the well, a few hundred meters from the well, at the base of the original blowout preventer on the well, and coming out of a gasket in the flange on the capping stack that was installed last week.</span></blockquote>In addition, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/19/AR2010071902220.html?sub=AR">Washington Post reports:</a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[V[ideo provided by BP showed drops of oil and gas leaking from a piece of the new containment cap just below three rams designed to cut off the flow from the well. The leak has caused the formation of some hydrates -- slushlike crystals of natural gas and water that torpedoed earlier containment efforts. But, Allen said, "we do not believe this is consequential at this time." </span></blockquote>Sounds like success, eh? Not. National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen is still keeping BP's latest fix-it effort <a href="http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2010/07/bps_gulf_well_is_experiencing.html">on a short leash</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Pressure in the well remains lower than what BP had originally expected to be, but climbing. Pressure currently stands at 6,811 pounds per square inch, and is rising by about one pound per square inch each hour.</span> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Allen said the well will remain shut in for another 24-hour observation period. However, if there is any sign of a significant drop in the well's pressure, officials are prepared to reopen the well immediately.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>Moreover, yesterday Allen <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9H2U7VG0">imposed on BP a new condition</a> to keeping the cap closed. If new anomalies are seen, "BP has to report to us and act on those within four hours."<br /><br />Scientists are huddling today, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9H2SVU01">according to the Associated Press,</a> "to analyze data from the ocean floor as they weigh whether a leaking well cap is a sign BP's broken oil well is buckling."<br /><br />If BP's latest attempted fix goes well, it will be the first time anything the corporation has tried actually works well since April 20.<br /><br /><b> 4. The BOP Leak. </b><br /><br />What are the odds of BP finally getting something right? Not good, as testimony showed early today at the resumed U. S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Energy Management joint investigative hearing in Louisiana. You can watch the hearing when in session on <a href="http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/07/20/HP/R/35758/BP+employees+testify+in+front+of+Coast+Guard+inquiry+hearing.aspx">C-Span here</a>.<br /><br />Today, BP's well site leader at the Deepwater Horizon platform, Ronald Sepulvado, testified that--<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">before he wrapped up his stint as BP's top man on the rig four days before the April 20 accident, he reported that one of the control pods on the blowout preventer, or BOP, had a leak.</span> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">He said he told his supervisor in Houston, BP team leader John Guide, and assumed that Guide would notify federal regulators at the Minerals Management Service. According to investigators, that never happened.<br /><br />Federal Regulation 250.451(d) states that if someone drilling in federal waters encounters "a BOP control station or pod that does not function properly" the rig must "suspend further drilling operations until that station or pod is operable."<br /><br />Asked if that was done, Sepulvado said it wasn't.<br /><br />"I assumed everything was OK because I reported it to the team leader and he should have reported it to MMS," Sepulvado said.</span></p></blockquote><p></p><b>5. Bullheading by Boys.</b><br /><br />The dirty secret about oil engineers is that they're really little boys at heart. They like making lots of new toys, but in their enthusiasm they also break a lot of them.<br /><br />Today, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/us/20oilspill.html?_r=1&amp;hp">New New York Times reports</a>:<br /><p> </p><blockquote><p><span style="font-size:85%;">Kent Wells, a senior vice president for BP, said the company was studying the possibility of a “static kill,” in which heavy mud would be pumped into the recently capped well. Also known as bullheading, the procedure would force the <span class="meta-classifier">oil</span> and gas back down into the reservoir. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> “The static kill does give us a new option,” he said at a briefing in Houston. A decision to proceed could be made in several days, Mr. Wells said.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>Either these guys enjoy the challenge of beating the monstrous oil leak and they want to keep going with the game; or, one could take this as an early sign that BP engineers have their own doubts about how long the 3-cap stack can hold back fresh oil without busting the seafloor wide open. It looks to us like Admiral Allen is afraid the latter is the case.<br /><br /><b>6. Florida's Oily Legislature. </b><br /><br />Today, the Florida legislature convenes in the special session <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/come-to-jesus-friday-july-9-bp-oil.html#crist">called by Governor Charlies Crist in early July</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span> to consider a proposed constitutional ballot measure to ban drilling off the Florida coast. It could turn out for many of the lawmakers to be their own political death.<br /><br />If so, the funeral with last rites will be held November 2 at a polling place near you. Suggested entries for the gravestone are welcome. Here's the first we received from a poetic reader:<br /><blockquote><blockquote>Here lies the Republican party.<br />No longer hale and hearty.<br />They wanted to drill<br />But BP did spill<br />So the voters have had their fill.</blockquote></blockquote>On the other hand, pro-drilling legislators may be looking forward to new riches if they beat back the governor's proposal. Did you ever wonder how it is politicians get rich on their paltry public salaries? <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/article1109907.ece">The St. Petersburg Times</a> hints at a possible answer:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">A Times/Herald review of campaign contributions to legislators and their political committees shows that between Jan. 1, 2009 and March 31, 2010, lawmakers received $278,452 from the oil and gas industry and their affiliated companies, including nearly $185,800 to the Republican Party of Florida and $77,000 to the Florida Democratic Party.<br /><br />During that time, next year's House speaker, Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, pushed a bill to lift the Florida drilling ban. He has since backed off on that plan.</span></blockquote><a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100720/OPINION/7200305/1020/Just-say-it--We-want-to-drill">Today's PNJ editorial</a> issues a Quixotic call on the lawmakers to "Just Say It." Be honest. Go ahead, shout '<span style="font-style: italic;">Drill, baby, drill' </span><span>again:</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[D]rilling advocates offer increasingly specious arguments against letting voters decide the matter.<br /><br />They tell us we shouldn't put such a big decision on the shoulders of voters at a time when they might make an "emotional" decision. But if it wasn't emotion driving repeal of the drilling ban this spring, could it have been heavy spending by pro-drilling lobbyists?<br /><br />And drilling supporters tell us that a ban wouldn't have protected us from the current disaster... because this spill occurred off Louisiana! OK — and if it happened 10 miles off Florida's beaches?<br /><br />Why won't drilling advocates be honest and admit they don't want to risk letting Florida voters ban the drilling legislators were about to approve? </span></blockquote>Rather a silly question, don't you think? The answer, of course, is that if Florida Republicans were honest with the voters they wouldn't be raking in the big bucks from the oil industry.<br /><br /><b>7. New Voices.</b><br /><br />The thing is, new voices and new politicians always arise in times of crisis. This time, they're coming from all the opponents to offshore drilling. One of them is <a href="http://www.handsacrossthesand.com/founder-dave-rauschkolb/">"Hands Across the Sand,"</a> headed by Dave Rauschkolb of Seaside, Florida.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">He owns three Panhandle restaurants along the beach, is a lifelong surfer and an avid fisherman. The decisions of other Gulf states, he says, are motivated by money, but have a far wider effect.<br /><br />"There are some things that we need to see not only in economic terms. The soul of America is being lost because of things being seen only in economic terms," he said. "They'd have to be blind and deaf to not see how their actions affect the other Gulf states."</span></blockquote>Quite possibly, Mr. Rauschkolb is just one of those "new" voices or people who'd like to take a crack at running for state office.<br /><br /><b><a name="lockerbie">8. Lockerbie Labyrinth.</a></b><br /><br />David Cameron, prime minister of Great Britain, is visiting the White House today. Two items sure to be on the agenda are the BP oil catastrophe and the release of convicted Libyan terrorist Abelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2010/0720/David-Cameron-to-meet-with-US-senators-over-Lockerbie-bombing">Cameron also will meet with four U.S. senators</a> who have particularly pointed questions about the al-Megrahi scandal.<br /><br />You know about the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91603e1a-74f6-11df-aed7-00144feabdc0.html">unbridled defense of BP Corp. mounted by British politicians and the British press</a> in the wake of the Gulf drilling catastrophe. They're not concerned about their own precipitously declining investments in British Petroleum -- excuse us,<span style="font-style: italic;"> BP Corp.</span> stock. Of course not. You think politicians or newspaper publishers could be so selfish?<br /><br />No, what they're worried about are <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/06/british_lawmakers_want_obama_t.html">all the poor little old lady pensioners in Great Britain</a> who are depending on BP stock to put bread on the table instead of cat food. Even though, as the <a href="http://www.dailyfinance.co.uk/2010/06/17/british-pensioners-to-pay-bp-spill-bill/">UK's <span style="font-style: italic;">Daily Finance </span>reports</a>, "many people" in Great Britain "will not be affected."<br /><br />Late last week before leaving for Washington <a href="http://www.bestgrowthstock.com/stock-market-news/2010/07/16/uks-cameron-says-to-defend-bp-in-washington/">Cameron signaled that he intends to use his face-time with Obama</a> to "discuss oil giant BP... with U.S. President Barack Obama... and stress how important a 'strong and stable' company is to both nations." Yes, indeed. Where would the Gulf coast be today if BP Corp. hadn't existed?<br /><br />It has been absolutely cringe-inducing to watch all these government and corporate officials lie so openly and obviously about the BP-engineered release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber. Both BP and the Labor Party ministers who played key roles in al-Megrahi's release are terrible, terrible liars. Yet, they do it with such a straight face that it makes the bottoms of our feet tickle as we watch them tiptoeing along the edge of a steep, unstable precipice of transparent prevarications.<br /><br />We've already <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/test-delay-wednesday-july-14-bp-oil.html#lockerbie">summarized the oily details</a> about how al-Megrahi won his freedom after being convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder-by-bombing of two hundred and seventy PanAm passengers over Lockerbie, Scotland. It's even more difficult for government officials to lie when Libyan officials themselves, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/us/politics/20britain.html?_r=1&amp;scp=2&amp;sq=david%20cameron%20white%20house&amp;st=cse">as the New York Times reports</a>, "have said Libya made clear to Britain that if Mr. Megrahi were not included in the transfer agreement, lucrative oil deals for British companies would not be approve."<br /><br />How many Libyans in British prisons were there, anyway, and of those how many had been convicted of terrorism offences? Long-time British cabinet minister <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200809/jtselect/jtrights/71/7105.htm">Jack Straw provided the answer when called to account</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">As at 31/12/08 there were 26 Libyans in UK prisons, of whom 25 were in England and Wales and one in Scotland. * * * One prisoner only has been convicted of a terrorism-related offence. </span></blockquote>Guess who that one prisoner was.<br /><br /><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/09/01/scotland.libya.lockerbie.documents/">Subsequently released government documents show</a> that Libya had warned Britain if al Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison, "it would have 'catastrophic effects for the relationship between Libya and the U.K.'" Even <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/6076926/Lockerbie-bomber-release-pressure-mounting-on-Gordon-Brown.html">the son of Muommar Gaddafi admits </a>the obvious:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">According to a transcript of comments made by Saif Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, Megrahi's release was "on the table in all commercial, oil and gas agreements" and other dealings with Britain.</span><br /></blockquote>In response to the overwhelming evidence that the British government was induced to release al-Megrahi by the promise of new drilling rights for BP Corp. in Libya, the British, Scottish, and U.S. governments are playing a painfully transparent game of pointing fingers at one another in hopes of confusing everybody. <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><ul><li><span style="font-style: italic;">'Not our fault'</span> claims Downing Street.<span style="font-style: italic;"> 'Scotland has an independent judiciary that made a "<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/07/20/2010-07-20_prime_minister_david_cameron_lockerbie_bomber_abdel_baset_almegrahi_should_have_.html">profoundly misguided decision"</a>.'</span></li><li><span style="font-style: italic;">'It wasn't us," </span><span>the Scottish Justice minister says.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-10698222">'Ask the British government</a> about "the deal in the desert."'<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-style: italic;">'Don't look at me,'</span> whines Tory prime minister Cameron. '<span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10693215">It was Scotland's decision</a> or maybe <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/07/19/2010-07-19_british_prime_minister_cameron_to_tell_president_obama_release_of_lockerbie_bomb.html">Gordon Brown's Labor Party did it</a>.'</span></li><li><span style="font-style: italic;">But you Tories," </span><span>replies the currently headless Labour Party,</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> 'are the ones who invited BP's convicted perjurer-bandit, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">the infamous former BP chief executive, Lord Browne of Madingley</span><span style="font-style: italic;">-- into your Government </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1291663/Return-Lord-Oil-Slick-Why-Cameron-handed-Lord-Browne-key-job.html">"to resurrect his tarnished career."</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> He's the guy who first established BP's culture of criminal negligence that led to the Gulf oil spill.</span><br /></li><li> <span style="font-style: italic;">'Get your stories straight,' </span>Secretary of State Hillary Clinton more or less said<a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/07/144854.htm"> in a press statement yesterday</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">'Whoever did it, we can't say it was in the interests of justice.'</span></li><li><span style="font-style: italic;">'Send more troops to Afghanistan to <a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/obamas-afghanistan-policy-by-tom-hayden">bale my centrist-loving ass out</a> and we'll believe any excuse you cook up,'</span> President Obama is expected to add.</li></ul>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-3593388199116542552010-07-19T09:41:00.006-05:002010-07-19T10:09:10.372-05:00Mordant Monday: July 19 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TERiXN9PlHI/AAAAAAAAD8g/b6E4lNfn7i8/s1600/10_0719_oilcast-noaa.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 275px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TERiXN9PlHI/AAAAAAAAD8g/b6E4lNfn7i8/s400/10_0719_oilcast-noaa.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5495625596321895538" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><br />Light southerly winds should shift later today to easterly winds, persisting at least through Wednesday, according to NOAA's oil spill forecast (above). You can see what that looks like by viewing the <a href="http://ocg6.marine.usf.edu/%7Ezheng/research/Oilspill/index.html">animated forecast of the Ocean Circulation Group</a> at the University of South Florida.<br /><br />NOAA forecasts locally that the <a href="http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/MOB/SRFMOB">surf should be calm</a> with "a low risk of rip currents." It looks like several relatively good days at the beach. Quick!<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/21/gulf-oil-spill-beach-weddings_n_620156.html"> Book your marriage on the beach</a>.<br /><br />By the way, if you've been thinking of getting away from the long-lasting BP oil spill by moving to, say, Phoenix or Albuquerque -- think again. <a href="http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100716_drought.html">NOAA's latest prediction is</a>, "drought conditions in the Southwest U.S. to worsen." What's more, with last month having been the hottest June on record and<a href="http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2010/06/sales-of-30-mpg-vehicles-drop-in-2010.html"> sales of fuel-efficient cars actually dropping in the U.S.</a> over the last five months, we don't expect the rest of the century to get any cooler.<br /><br /><b>2. Anomalies at the Well.</b><br /><br />Shortly before eight o'clock last night, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen of the Unified Command sent<a href="http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/posted/2931/BP_Letter_18_July.791571.pdf"> a sharp, biting letter to BP's managing director, Bob Dudley</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;">.</span> He extended the test period for the new 3-stack cap "contingent upon the completion of seismic surveys, robust monitoring for indications of leakage, and acoustic testing by the NOAA vessel PISCES in the immediate vicinity of the well head."<br /><br />The pressure test of the well now gets extended day by day. The reason is that a "seep" of oil has been detected some distance from the well. Plus, there are reported anomalies at the well head itself. This tends to confirm<a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/perplexing-saturday-july-17-bp-oil.html#pressure"> concerns which revived when pressure readings on the cap turned out lower than hoped for </a>that there is a leak in the wellbore or the seafloor. If the cap isn't reopened, the environmental disaster could become even worse and harder to fix.<br /><br />First word of this came late yesterday in an <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9H1O9FO0">AP dispatch</a> which attributed knowledge of a seafloor leak to an anonymous "administration official."<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">An administration official familiar with the spill oversight, however, told The Associated Press that a seep and possible methane were found near the busted oil well. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.</span></blockquote>BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-oilspill_19tex.ART.State.Edition2.2960a25.html">would admit in a press conference yesterday morning</a> only that "a few bubbles" had been found around the well. But a sketchy<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWLA865620100719"> early morning report today by Reuters News</a> alludes to BP engineers as the source of the information that oil is leaking from the seafloor. It also appears the company may be trying to claim the leak comes from some cause other than the Deepwater Horizon explosion that blew things to smithereens.<br /><br /><b>3. Unified No More?</b><br /><br />Admiral Allen sternly laid down additional conditions for continuing the pressure testing. The manner and substance of his directive to BP manifest serious tensions between the Government and the mega-corporation over just how much information BP has been sharing with the Unified Command.<br /><br />Wrote Allen:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[Y]ou are required to provide as a top priority access and coordination for the monitoring systems, which include seismic and sonar surface ships and subsea ROV and acoustic systems. When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours. I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.<br />* * *<br />Now that source control has evolved into a period beyond the expected 48 hour interval of the Well Integrity Test, I am requiring that you provide me a written update within 24 hours of your intentions going forward. I remain concerned that all potential options to eliminate the discharge of oil be pursued with utmost speed until I can be assured that no additional oil will spill from the Macondo Well.<br />* * *<br />I direct you to provide a detailed plan for the final stages of the relief well that specifically addresses the interaction of this schedule and any other activity that may potentially delay relief well completion.</span><br /></blockquote>Three shockers inspired Allen's letter, as one can discern from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/us/19oilspill.html?_r=1&amp;hp">Henry Fountain's front-page article in today's New York Times.</a><br /><br /><b>4. Out of Sight, Out of the News.</b><br /><br />First, as mentioned above, Allen's letter reveals that the <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/perplexing-saturday-july-17-bp-oil.html#pressure">ambiguous pressure test results</a> show that oil and methane gas is seeping from the seafloor. This means the cap hasn't necessarily stopped the leak, as so many news sources were erroneously reporting yesterday; the leak likely continues from the seafloor, out of sight of underwater cameras available to the public and, perhaps, the Government.<br /><br />Second, yesterday BP launched a widespread public disinformation campaign with press releases, anonymous official statements, and web updates all emphasizing that 'currently the well remains shut-in with no oil flowing into the Gulf.' BP made no mention about leaks at the seafloor.<br /><br />NPR's persistently miserable coverage by studio-bound Richard Harris is a prime example of the stenographic coverage offered by most news sources yesterday. Relying as he so often does on BP's sunny press releases, <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128600381">Harris reported yesterday</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">And they said the well looks good still. The pressure is holding. They're surveying the seafloor with cameras and sonar and they're not seeing any oil come up. That's good. They're also using deep penetrating surveys to look deep underground and they're not seeing anything alarming there either. So that looks good.<br /></span></blockquote>Harris' credulity is boundless when it comes to swallowing BP's claims. He wasn't alone in that. The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/18/gulf-oil-spill-bp-cap">UK Guardian summarized</a> BP's blitz of press statements yesterday this way:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Tests over the weekend on the new cap placed over the broken well suggested that it was working, there were no leaks, the flow had been stopped and – wonder of wonders – it might stay that way until the well is finally and conclusively plugged, probably next month</span>.</blockquote> Third, BP began making noises that it intends to abandon the plan worked out earlier with the Unified Command. As Henry Fountain puts it: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[A] senior BP official said Sunday that the company’s recently capped well in the Gulf of Mexico was holding up and that BP now hoped to keep the well closed until it could be permanently plugged.* * * That BP plan differs sharply from the one the company and the federal government had suggested only a day earlier, to eventually allow the flow of oil to resume temporarily, collecting it through pipes to surface ships.</span></blockquote>At bottom, as Fountain writes, "the company very much wants to avoid a repeat of the live underwater video that showed millions of gallons of oil spewing from the blown well for weeks" and "the government wants to eliminate any chance of making matters worse." Clashing objectives, obviously. Will they lead to all-out disagreement?<br /><br />The larger question all of this poses is whether BP considers itself subordinate to the commander of the Unified Command. Once again, it seems, as with<a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/test-delay-wednesday-july-14-bp-oil.html#lockerbie"> BP's shadowy connection to the Lockerbie bomber's release</a> we find our era rhyming with the fourteenth century <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/06/oil-hell-breaks-loose-thursday-june-10.html#distantmirror">when the economic and political organization of the western world was radically changing</a>. Popes, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Boniface_VIII#Conflicts_with_Philip_IV">Boniface VIII</a>, kept issuing their usual encyclicals but leaders of the newly-empowered nation-states, like Phillip IV, started defying them.<br /><br />For the moment -- or, rather, for the next twenty-four hours -- a direct confrontation has been avoided. Early this morning, <a href="http://app.restorethegulf.gov/go/doc/2931/791891/">Admiral Allen released a statement</a> saying that in overnight conversations, "<span style="font-size:small;">the federal science team got the answers they were seeking and the commitment from BP to meet their monitoring and notification obligations." Accordingly, the cap will remain in place for another twenty-four hours while </span>pressure testing of the well continues and additional seismic surveys are undertaken.<br /><br /><b>5. Sand Story.</b><br /><br />Kimberly Blair has been doing a terrific job for the PNJ covering Pensacola Beach issues about the oil catastrophe. Today, she has <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100719/NEWS01/7190318/Oil-spill-Saving-area-sand">an 1100-plus word investigative report</a> on what's happening with the famously white sand on the beach.<br /><br />We've all seen it: BP clean-up workers grabbing not only tarballs but also large hunks of sand. Bulldozers are even less discriminating as they scrape up enormous shovel-fulls of sand and tar and then pour them into the beds of waiting dump trucks, which disappear into the night.<br /><br />"[F]or every tar ball and oil blob scooped up during the cleaning process, a chunk of the signature sand goes into a clear plastic bag," Blair writes. Where's it all going? she asks. To "Waste Management's Springhill Landfill north of Panama City," she answers.<br /><br />The bags filled by individual cleanup workers contain "Between 10 to 20 percent... oil and 80 to 90 percent sand," Keith Wilkins tells Blair. Wilkens, who is Escambia County's deputy chief of Community Services, has emerged as the local answer man for most oil related questions. Doubtless, the percentages are much worse for the 'dozers and sand scrapers. But even he can't say how much oil the heavy equipment has round into the layers of sand beneath the feet of beach-goers.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Scoopers and scrapers took up too much sand. Heavy tractors and trailers destabilized the shoreline, making it vulnerable to natural erosion. The weight of the heavy machines forced oil deeper into the sand and created a public safety hazard for beachgoers.<br /><br />As of Wednesday, 13,382 tons of crude-contaminated debris, including sand, from oil-impacted beaches of Northwest Florida, has gone to the landfill. Of that, an estimated 1,600 tons, or 2,400 cubic yards, of sand have been removed from Escambia County beaches, said Amy Graham with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.</span></blockquote> County and island officials are now reconsidering past approaches, Blair reports.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The environmentally friendly cleanup methods Escambia County is adopting are similar to what Gulf Islands National Seashore has been doing all along, Barbara Dougan, the Seashore's oil-response spokeswoman, said. Rakes and small shovels are being used to scoop up the sand and sift it through fish nets. Sieves and even french frying baskets are being tested with great success in the seashore's Mississippi parks, she said.<br /><br />Heavy equipment is not allowed on the sensitive seashore, which is a critical habitat for nesting sea turtles and shore birds. The park will use the beach rakes only in areas where they won't damage the invertebrates that live along the shoreline.</span></blockquote>Sand renourishment well may be required, similar to what Pensacola Beach residents have seen and paid for twice in the past eight years, Blair calculates. And she's not counting post-Hurricane Opal renourishment, which was the first for Pensacola Beach.<br /><br />But what to do with the oiled sand already collected? Well, that's a work in progress. A Waste Management spokeswoman says, "It is still in the experimental stage, but we are committed to finding a green solution."<br /><br />As for the buried oil still on the beach below the surface sand, "that's something we have to leave in place and address at the end of all of this with a major excavation," Wilkins told Blair. "We can't (remove it) with major oil hitting our beaches every week."<br /><br />Or every month or, god forbid, every year if the well and seafloor leaks continue indefinitely. <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/survival-sunday-july-18-bp-oil-spill.html#species">Once again, it seems,</a> BP's environmental catastrophe has left us with an unprecedented problem that will be with us for generations.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-10661832568581771182010-07-18T08:34:00.009-05:002010-07-20T16:14:28.834-05:00Survival Sunday: July 18 BP Oil Spill Update<blockquote><i>""In ecosystems, when you wipe out large segments of them, the ecosystem responds to the absence of those things and other things come in to take their place and you don't return to the way things were."</i><center><span style="font-size:85%;">-- Stan Senner, <a href="http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home">Ocean Conservancy</a> (quoted by BBC News, July 13, 2010)</span></center></blockquote><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEMCdppcgWI/AAAAAAAAD8Y/x1KhWT5nnpw/s1600/10_0718_noaa-oilcast.jpg">Click image to read:</a><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEMCdppcgWI/AAAAAAAAD8Y/x1KhWT5nnpw/s1600/10_0718_noaa-oilcast.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEMCdppcgWI/AAAAAAAAD8Y/x1KhWT5nnpw/s400/10_0718_noaa-oilcast.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5495238678741287266" border="0" /></a><b>2. The Hyppocratic Oilth.</b><br /><br />In <a href="http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/790363/">a statement by Adm. Thad Allen released yesterday</a>, it was announced:<blockquote> The federal science team has been closely overseeing BP's well integrity test with the goal of first doing no harm to the well.</blockquote> We'll call that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath">Hyppocratic Oilth</a>. Adm. Allen goes on: <blockquote> <span style="font-size:85%;">Based on the data and pressure readings compiled to date, the test has provided us with valuable information which will inform the procedure to kill the well and a better understanding of options for temporary shut in during a hurricane.<br />* * *<br />As we continue to see success in the temporary halt of oil from the leak, the U.S. government and BP have agreed to allow the well integrity test to continue another 24 hours.<br /><br />The government has ordered additional monitoring of the area while the test continues which includes doubling the seismic mapping runs over the well site. A NOAA sonar ship has also been brought to the site to assist in monitoring the entire sea floor area around the well. The ship will make regular passes around the well looking for any hydrocarbon release subsea, and both acoustic and visual monitoring of the area with ROV's will continue. </span></blockquote>Happy days will not be here again even if the tests disclose no known leaks. The admiral's statement makes it clear that "when this test is eventually stopped, we will immediately return to containment... ." That means, opening up the well again and collecting more oil-mixed-with water.<br /><br />This morning, BP announced in a statement that the "test" will be completed Sunday afternoon. And, you'll be shocked to hear that <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD9H1FIBO0">BP's spokesman says everything is going just peachy</a>.<br /><br />As always, the permanent solution still is weeks away, when and if the relief wells hit their target and heavy mud and cement seal the well for good.<br /><br /><b>3. Relief Wells.</b><br /><br />"Can it work?" <strike>Thyrie Bland</strike> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Travis Griggs</span> asks about a relief well in the headline of <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100718/NEWS01/7180317/Relief-well-Can-it-work-">today's Sunday Pensacola News Journal</a>. <strike>Bland</strike> Griggs offers an admirably vivid and compelling word picture of the process, leaving no doubt how dicey are the prospects:<br /><blockquote>Deep beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, past where blue water fades to black, past the point where the pressure would crush a nuclear submarine, past the frigid sandy seafloor and thousands of feet of shale and stone — is where engineers must stop the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for good.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">With a long string of steel and a rock-crushing bit, engineers must carve a three-mile path, weaving through pockets of explosive gas before feeling their way with high-tech sensors toward a target no wider than a telephone pole. In a delicate dance orchestrated from 18,000 feet above, the drill must brush — but not bump — alongside the steel casing of the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well.<br /><br />With their eyes glued to pressure gauges, engineers will lower a tool to cut a window through the steel wall of the errant well. When they strike oil, they go in for the kill.<br /><br />With massive pumps pushing fluid as fast as 100 fire hoses, engineers pump a heavy sludge into the bottom of the gushing well. At first the oil will sweep the kill fluid toward the surface, but as thousands of gallons of heavy mud fill the three-mile well bore, its weight pushes back against the pressure of the oil.<br /><br />The pumps race. The pressure builds. And if everything goes right, the oil stops.</span></blockquote>But relief wells don't always go right. <strike>Bland</strike> Griggs doesn't blanch at telling us about last year's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/us/03montara.html">Timor Sea disaster</a> or the 10-month-long Pemco blow-out at the Ixtoc well in the Bay of Campeche, or a shallow-water gas well blow-up off the Louisiana coast.<br /><br />He could have mentioned dozens of others, neatly <a href="http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/index.htm">cataloged here on a British web site</a> into categories like "deadliest," "most expensive," "sunk rigs," and so on. Some took as many as five tries at a successful relief well. Another catalog of petroleum pollution, indexed by corporate identity, is <a href="http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/book_shelf/26_spilldb.pdf">provided by NOAA here.</a><br /><br />"Everybody's confident that we'll get it," <strike>Bland</strike> Griggs quotes BP drilling advisor Terry Jordan as saying.<br /><br />"Get it" as in eventually, someday, capping BP's runanway oil well? Yes, probably.<br /><br />But "get it" as in waking up to see that this dangerous source of energy is poisoning the planet and we need to rush the development of alternatives? That remains to be seen.<br /><br /><b><a name="species">4. Surviving Species.</a></b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10603727">"How much damage has the BP oil spill done?</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;">"</span> BBC News asked this week. "And when will it be fully repaired?"<br /><br />The answers are "we aren't sure" and "probably never." The warmth of the Gulf should help degrade the leaked oil much faster than in a cold climate like Prince William Sound -- where ninety percent of the Exxon Valdez oil persists in the water, under rocks, and in the soil. That doesn't mean, however, that the oil and its penetrating effects on the chain of life will totally vanish from the Gulf of Mexico anytime soon. Not even in the life time of everyone alive today.<br /><br />Summarizes the BBC:<br /><blockquote>There may be oil which becomes buried on shore, and oil may end up at the bottom of the sea in anaerobic areas - places where there is no oxygen to allow the microbes to do their work.<br /><br />"We have never seen these clouds or plumes of oil dispersed in tiny droplets in the water," says [Stan] Senner. "We don't know how much is ending up on the bottom. Onshore, we don't know how much is being buried."</blockquote>Habitats where the oil has sufficiently penetrated the several thousand known species of sea grasses, marine algae, fungi, and other <a href="http://www.healthygulf.org/our-work/gulf-fish-forever/habitat-loss#seagrass">"submerged aquatic vegetation"</a> will die -- as will the more complex forms of sea life that depend upon them. If the oil penetrates the roots of coastal sea oats, succulents, ferns, shrubs, and trees, these plants also are unlikely to survive.<br /><br />Where such plants are stabilizing islands, wetlands or estuaries, "then you are going to lose those areas altogether. [Wetlands] will go to open water and will never recover," Senner says.<br /><br />As for fish, bird, and animal species, experts interviewed by the BBC suggest that the shorter the life span, the quicker a specie may recover if there are sufficient unaffected like-kind organisms to breed in their place; but longer-lived animals like "dolphins, whale sharks and sea turtles... might not fully recover for 10-20 years."<br /><br />And that's the optimistic view. Endangered species, like <a href="http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/ridley/"> Kemp's Ridley sea turtle</a> and the <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/06/atlantic_bluefin_tuna_oil_spil.php">Bluefin Tuna</a>, which have the misfortune to breed near where the Deepwater Horizon platform was, may disappear altogether.<br /><br />The largest changes may be undetected for some time. Senner warns:<blockquote>In ecosystems, when you wipe out large segments of them, the ecosystem responds to the absence of those things and other things come in to take their place and you don't return to the way things were. * * * Ecosystems are always dynamic. </blockquote>As Charles Darwin taught us, all living things may become displaced by other organisms when habitats change by natural causes or the hand of man. An <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304142242.htm">asteroid collision with Earth</a> renders dinosaurs extinct and clears the way for small nocturnal mammals to evolve, some of them eventually evolving into homo sapiens. Humankind's coal-fired furnaces <a href="http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm">almost wipe out light-colored pepper moths</a> by making them easy prey to spot against the coal-dust darkened lichen of trees, resulting in 98% of the moths being darker colored.<br /><br />As <a href="http://brembs.net/gould.html">Stephen Jay Gould also argued</a> compellingly, "contingency, or shaping of present results by long chains of unpredictable antecedent states" inevitably influence how the "timeless laws of nature" work.<br /><br />Relief wells or no, the Gulf will never be the same. What that means for shrimp, fish, dolphins, sea turtles, and the humans who live here may not be known for a very, very long time. But it will never be the same.<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"> correction to substitute<br />Travis Griggs as author 7-20 pm</span>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-38017452807865255832010-07-17T08:08:00.002-05:002010-07-19T04:36:11.584-05:00Perplexing Saturday: July 17 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEGglXHvBAI/AAAAAAAAD8M/czg61zcv3Hc/s1600/10_0717_wavcisproj.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 359px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEGglXHvBAI/AAAAAAAAD8M/czg61zcv3Hc/s400/10_0717_wavcisproj.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494849584090776578" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast.</b><br /><br />There is a new normal on Pensacola Beach. "It's been fairly nice" means, in <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100717/NEWS01/7170318/Beaches-clean-as-oil-plume-stays-south">Kimberly Blair's paraphrasing</a> of a local county official, "Most of the tar balls on the beach are weathered and appear to be left over from the major impact in mid-June, though fresher, oily tar balls have begun dotting the high-tide line on Pensacola Beach and Perdido Key... ."<br /><br />That official, director Keith Wikins of Escambia County's Community Service Bureau, reads the forecast as keeping "the oil plume hanging offshore south of us" for the next few days. That's also consistent with what Louisiana State University's WAVCIS projections by the Coastal Studies Department show (above).<br /><br />L.S.U.'s Coastal Studies Department has another useful animation showing the 120-hour "Surface Current Forecast." <a href="http://wavcis.csi.lsu.edu/forecasts/forecasts.asp?modelspec=currents">CLICK HERE to see it</a>.<br /><br /><b>2. Well Test.</b><br /><br /><a href="http://trueslant.com/oshagraydavidson/2010/07/15/whats-really-happening-with-the-bp-well/">Osha Gray Davidson explains</a> what's "really been happening" at BP's leaking well site. Looks like we're not the only ones frustrated by <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/cap-testing-thursday-july-15-bp-oil.html#npr">National Public Radio's lousy coverage</a>:<blockquote> <span style="font-size:85%;">[T]he BP well has not been plugged. It hasn’t been stopped, capped, or extinguished.<br /><br />It has been “controlled,” just like the cockroaches that are guaranteed to return once the poison wears off.<br /><br />The press has been getting this wrong from the git-go and they are still screwing up. Yesterday, I heard the usually reliable NPR repeat the false notion that BP is testing the cap. No, they’re testing the well by using the cap.<br /><br />This isn’t just word-play. Once the distinction between testing the cap and testing the well was lost, people were certain to celebrate victory when the cap worked, even though we knew it would.<br /><br />Here is what’s actually happening.<br /><br />To make sure that the well bore — the part below the seafloor — is not damaged and leaking oil into cracks or holes in the rock, the cap is tricked out with pressure gauges. Now in place, the cap is controlling the oil flow. But time is the key. More time = greater pressure = well integrity. </span></blockquote><b><a name="pressure">2. Puzzling Pressure.</a></b><br /><br />What are the results to this hour? Perplexing:<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Pressure readings in the well rose significantly in the 24 hours after the valves were closed on a cap at the top of the well, an indication that the well was in good shape. But officials voiced caution, saying that they had expected that the pressure might rise even higher, and that the possibility of damage from the April 20 blowout could not yet be ruled out.</span><br /></blockquote>On <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/july-dec10/oil_07-15.html">PBS' News Hour Thursday</a>, the night before the new blow out preventer on the stack cap was closed, Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach was asked about the possible outcome of this experimental reality show in the Gulf. Here's his answer: <blockquote> <span style="font-size:85%;">Lots of possibilities.</span> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Now, the worst-case scenario is kablooey, OK, that, when you close the well, the pressure builds. And you can just imagine that the casing of this well down below the Gulf floor may be damaged. And so you could hav</span><span style="font-size:85%;">e a further kind of a lateral blowout into the rock formation.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Then you could have a situation of sort of cratering, of erosion, of gas and oil surging up in multiple leaks around the blowout preventer. Now, that, however, is not the most likely scenario. And there is no sign that that has happened.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">The other possibility is -- and The Washington Post today is reporting -- I talked to one of the top scientists -- the other possibility is the pressure readings could be ambiguous. It is not what you want to see. It's not terrible. You have to sit there and figure out, well, what's going on here?</span></p> </blockquote>So far, that's where it seems BP is at the moment -- scratching its oily corporate head while wondering where did the pressure go?<br /><br />Is it lower than expected because over the past three months BP's well already released an abundance of poisonous gas and crude oil into the human habit? Is some of it escaping out a hole in the well casing BP hasn't found? Is the oil and gas perhaps being squeezed into subsurface cracks in the rock formations, like toothpaste escaping through holes in the bottom of the tube?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10670760">The BBC reports </a>"the company will soon run another seismic survey to check for any evidence of ruptures." A second seismic survey wouldn't have been of much use if President Obama's energy secretary, Steve Chu, hadn't insisted on a baseline survey before closing the stack cap. Thanks to Chu, BP will have something with which to compare the latest seismic imagery.<br /><br /><b>3. Chu Knew</b>.<br /><br />What a difference brains in an office-holder make, eh? The last two U.S. Secretaries of Energy were (1) a middling-level pol whose chief claim to fame was <a href="http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2008/12/bushs_first_ene.html">he introd</a><a href="http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2008/12/bushs_first_ene.html">uced a bill in the U.S. Senate to abolish the department of energy;</a> and (2) a complete non-entity who previously headed <a href="http://www.morphizm.com/observations/leopold/leo_bodman.html">the fourth-worst air polluting company in Texas.</a><br /><br />Secretary Chu, by contrast, is a "board-certified genius" and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/us/politics/17chu.html?hpw">Nobel Prize winning physicist who "has stepped in repeatedly</a> to take command of the effort to contain BP’s runaway well, often ordering company officials to take steps they might not have taken on their own."<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">In early May, he suggested using gamma ray imaging to determine the condition of the well’s blowout preventer, a mo</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ve no one at the company had considered. </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> A few weeks later, he overruled some BP officials and ordered the company to stop the “top kill” effort, citing “very, very grave concerns” that it could backfire. </span></p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> He insisted in late June that a tighter cap be installed on the leaking riser. And on Tuesday, over the strenuous objections of top BP officials, he ordered a 24-hour delay in plans to conduct a pressure test on the well, saying that more safety precautions and analysis were necessary. </span></p></blockquote>If there's a bright spot anywhere to be seen as we look back over the past three months, it's that Steven Chu has probably saved us from the absolute worst of which BP is capable.<br /><br /><b>4. Pensacola Bea</b><b>ch Cleanup Continues. </b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/16/well_cap_results/">Salon reported yesterday</a> that "on Pensacola Beach... dozens of BP workers in neon vests operated heavy equipment up and down the beach throughout the night and early morning."<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Workers used shovels and rakes to comb through the sands for pieces of tar. Other workers then collect the clumps of tar in bags, which are carried by the front-end loaders to dump trucks and hauled away down the beach.</span></blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEF2eeFtplI/AAAAAAAAD78/WTqSQGUHD_Y/s1600/10_0717_ftpick-2boats.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 108px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEF2eeFtplI/AAAAAAAAD78/WTqSQGUHD_Y/s200/10_0717_ftpick-2boats.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494803286213895762" border="0" /></a>We saw a lot of that as we took a tour down the road to Ft. Pickens. A dozen or more white vans stuffed with workers were coming back toward the central core even as two huge buses filled with more BP workers was heading in the opposite direction toward the fort. Heavy equipment was scattered all along the seven miles stretch of beach -- road graders, dump trucks, and oversized dune buggies predominated.<br /><br />Two large boats were just offshore (above). We couldn't be sure if they were looking for oil slicks or skimming it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEF26ao9UgI/AAAAAAAAD8E/lJ8ZoUqj7d8/s1600/10_0717_heli-tarballs.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 122px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEF26ao9UgI/AAAAAAAAD8E/lJ8ZoUqj7d8/s200/10_0717_heli-tarballs.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494803766324318722" border="0" /></a>A helicopter flew low above the beach (below left). It appeared to be a spotter, looking for tar mats.<br /><br />In the midst of all this, here and there small knots of scantily-clad sunbathers were stretched out on the sand, clean-up workers in hazmat suits combed the beach for conspicuous tarballs and trash, and the occasional tourist could be seen wading thigh-deep in the surf as if nothing had changed.<br /><br />As we say, it's the new "normal."<br /><b><br />5. Can't Fool Mother Nature.</b><br /><br />Welcome as all the hour-by-hour and day-and-night clean-up activity may be, as <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/16/1734207/despite-gulf-cleanup-efforts-nature.html#ixzz0ttcZWLJG">Rene Shoof writes for McClatchy newspapers</a>, the truth is "nature will have to do most of it."<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">While BP has hired thousands of people to boom, skim and burn large amounts of crude, the bulk of an estimated 200 million gallons of oil that spewed into the water is actually beyond human reach. As a result, the ultimate cleanup will be left to nature and to colonies of oil-chomping microbes.<br /><br />Capturing most of the spill is now all but impossible to do.<br />* * *<br />"I think the bottom line is that once the oil gets into the water column — not just the surface — the genie is out of the bottle (and) that we do not have any effective ways to get the genie back into the bottle," said Robert Bea, a University of California engineering professor and an expert on offshore drilling.<br /><br />Bea worked for Shell Oil on the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 and the Bay Marchand, La., spill in 1970 and for the Mexican oil company Pemex on the huge Ixtoc spill in 1979. In the years since those spills, the technology of cleanup hasn't changed, he said.</span></blockquote>What's worse, no one knows what the consequences of all this oil in the Gulf will be.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Bea said that two of the newer approaches used by BP to combat the blowout didn't work very well. The unprecedented use of chemical dispersants — more than 1.8 million gallons — helped keep oil off beaches, where people notice it, but the dispersants were ineffective and environmentally destructive, he said. </span><div style="overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;"></div></blockquote><b>6. Is the plural of oil mousse "meece?"</b><br /><br />A beach friend called out attention to this <a href="http://blog.al.com/live/2010/07/fodder_from_mousse_patties_to.html">lexicon of oil spills</a>. Study it. Pop quiz tomorrow.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-72790879893801516552010-07-16T06:07:00.008-05:002010-07-16T08:10:57.262-05:00Anxiously Waiting Friday July 16 BP Oil Spill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEA7cNmP1cI/AAAAAAAAD70/hJCMUXoABdc/s1600/10_0716_noaaoilcast.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 260px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEA7cNmP1cI/AAAAAAAAD70/hJCMUXoABdc/s400/10_0716_noaaoilcast.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494456901264463298" border="0" /></a><b>1. Weekend Oilcast</b>.<br /><br />However welcome the latest news, below, the weekend could get oily for parts of Pensacola Beach and nearby beaches. NOAA's 48-hour oil projection map, above, shows us just outside the dreaded Zone of Uncertainty. But the Mobile regional weather office reports:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Southwest Atlantic Ridge will build westward today as a tropical wave moves westward resulting in an increasing southeasterly wind flow which will persist through the period. Seas will build to 3 feet by late today and become fully developed on Saturday and remain near 3 feet through Monday when subsiding seas will occur.</span></blockquote>Heavier, sustained seas from a southerly direction are not good. We need a north wind. If near-shore seas are more moderate, however, we may get lucky again. Keep an eye on the colored flags at Pensacola Beach. Red and yellow are bad, green good.<br /><br /><b>2. Anxious Waiting, Cautious Hoping.</b><br /><br />Harry Webber for the <a href="http://www.ajc.com/business/gulf-geyser-stops-gushing-570950.html">Associated Press has it exactly right:</a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">BP finally gained control over one of America's biggest environmental catastrophes by placing a carefully fitted cap over a runaway geyser that has been gushing </span><span style="font-size:85%;">crude into the Gulf of Mexico since early spring. Engineers, politicians and Gulf residents will watch anxiously over the next day and a half to see if it holds.<br /><br />After nearly three months and up to 184 million gallons, the accomplishment was greeted with hope, high expectations — and, in many cases along the beleaguered coastline, disbelief. But no one was declaring victor</span><span style="font-size:85%;">y just yet.</span></blockquote>Locally, the PNJ relies on a report from its sister newspaper, USA Today, that adopts the same cautiousness. [<a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100716/NEWS01/7160320/Oil-stops-flowing-but-is-it-over-">"Oil Stops Flowing But Is It Over?"</a>] Dan Vergano explains:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The success of the </span><span style="font-size:85%;">new cap, the best hope yet of containing the leak, still rides on pressure tests that began late Wednesday. In a metaphor for the bumpy progress of containing the disaster, the testing halted when a valve in the new cap started leaking. It was fixed, and the oil stopped flowing.<p>But for how long? Engineers will monitor the pressure readings over a period of 48 hours.</p>Looming even larger is the work on a nearby relief well that BP continues to bill as the permanent solution to stopping the spill that has triggered a $3.5 billion response.</span> </blockquote>Here in Pensacola, Sean Dugas supplements the national news with reactions from a few local residents.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">"I think we have a long road to hoe, but this will lift people's spirits. Now we know where we stand. As long as it was flowing, it seemed like there was no hope."</span> - Darice Langham, 40, of Pensacola<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"It's about time. If they would have taken care of the blowout value in the first place, we wouldn't be in thi</span><span style="font-style: italic;">s mess now. It's sad. It's just sad."</span> - Diane Nelms, 55, of Milton</blockquote>Campbell Robinson and Henry Fountain in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/us/17spill.html?_r=1&amp;hp">New York Times quote another coastal resident</a>, a fisherman from Louisiana: <blockquote> "It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a dead man in my opinion, said Jeff Ussury, 48, who considers his days as a crabber over for good. He doubted the news of the capping was even true.<br /><br />“I started out kind of believing in them,” he said, “but I don’t believe in them at all anymore.” </blockquote> We don't remember cynicism being <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/05/stages-of-oil-grief.html">one of the stages of oil grief</a>, but it makes sense under the circumstances. Even if the pressure tests hold, there are more hazards to be overcome. Not the least of them is the tropical storm season and what it could wash up on our shores even months after the BP oil leak is stopped at the source -- if it ever is.<br /><br /><b>3. Rubio's Poopy Platform.</b><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEAq0mEHv_I/AAAAAAAAD7c/6SlncML64QA/s1600/10_0716_marlette.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 156px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEAq0mEHv_I/AAAAAAAAD7c/6SlncML64QA/s200/10_0716_marlette.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494438628451401714" border="0" /></a></span>Andy Marlette's editorial cartoon for the PNJ today reminds everyone that Republican senatorial candidate Marco Rubio still favors drilling off the Florida coast. What it reminds us about is what we've been told is an old Vaudeville joke: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Some dirty </span><span style="font-style: italic;">pigeon stooled on me."</span><br /><br />Those "drill, baby, drill" pols are still out there, even if they are laying low for now. While we hope for a permanent stop to the leak, <span style="font-style: italic;">they're</span> hoping the voters get amnesia and forget the devastation which indiscriminate deep water drilling in the Gulf can cause.<br /><b><br />4. Europe Learns.</b><br /><br />Having watched with horror our misfortune, the European Union is now <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/3920727/EU-pushes-deepwater-drill-ban">considering a ban on deep water drilling. </a><br /><br /><b>5. Rebranding BP.</b><br /><br />As we have cautioned, even if the leak has been stopped for good <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/cap-test-tuesday-july-13-bp-oil-spill.html#lastingdamage">lasting damage has been done</a> to the Gulf and to coastal communities in five states. Some worry that BP's image is a little dented, too.<br /><br />In a parody of those authoritarian stalwarts who look forward to the day when BP once again rules MMS and drills wherever it wants however it wants, Great Britain's chapter of <a href="http://rebrandbp.greenpeace.org.uk/">Greenpeace has been holding a "rebranding contest" for BP</a>. Multiple entries have been received in the categories of Best Logo, Best Illustration, Best Wildlife, Best Slogan, and -- our favorite category -- "WTF?"<br /><br />And, you get to vote for the ones you like best! Our personal favorite is in the "best slogan" category. It pokes fun at two villains with one blow:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEA0z0GINFI/AAAAAAAAD7s/xyR0e0jVsEc/s1600/10_0716_bp-sloganparaody.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 211px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TEA0z0GINFI/AAAAAAAAD7s/xyR0e0jVsEc/s400/10_0716_bp-sloganparaody.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494449610154325074" border="0" /></a></span></span><b>6. Unbelievable.</b><br /><br />Would you believe there was more drilling of oil wells in the very same quarter of the year BP's Deep Horizon platform blew up than in the year before? <a href="http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews.aspx?xmlpath=RSSFeed/HeadlineNews/NaturalGas/6182292.xml">It's true, according to the American Petroleum Institute: </a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">After posting a 22% decline in the first quarter, US oil and natural gas drilling activity staged a turnaround in Q2, with completions rising 38% from the same period of 2009, the American Petroleum Institute said in a report this week.<br /><br />An estimated 10,358 oil wells, gas wells and dry holes were completed in Q2, API said.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:78%;"><br />minor edit 7-16am</span>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-22746535728847511322010-07-15T17:18:00.000-05:002010-07-15T17:19:12.498-05:00Overnight No-Spill CamNews Hour reports: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/07/bp-holding-back-oil-for-now.html">"BP Holding Back Oil, for Now; Ticker Stands Still." </a><br /><br />Help us monitor the underwater cap stack overnight. If you see oil or anything else untoward, please let us know.<p><iframe src="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/oil-ticker/video.html" style="" marginheight="5" marginwidth="5" width="300px" frameborder="0" height="490" scrolling="no"></iframe><br /><br /></p>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-5693577984116899192010-07-15T11:48:00.009-05:002010-07-15T12:28:27.623-05:00Cap Testing Thursday: July 15 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD85EpAZKLI/AAAAAAAAD68/HrlFI-C7zLI/s1600/10_0715_72hr-windproj.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 241px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD85EpAZKLI/AAAAAAAAD68/HrlFI-C7zLI/s400/10_0715_72hr-windproj.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494172822305056946" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast</b><br /><br />Today we configured <a href="http://gomex.erma.noaa.gov/">NOAA's new interactive spill map</a> for wind and wave projections over the next 72 hours (as above). It looks like the moderately light southerly breezes we saw on the beach yesterday will continue. By late yesterday afternoon, we made the wind out to be almost a two-club wind at times, or as brisk as 15 mph along unprotected shores. Small white caps dotted Pensacola Bay.<br /><br />A southerly breeze generally means southerly currents near to shore. These days, with large sheets of oil hanging around offshore, that almost inevitably means at least some small tarballs and fresh oil mousse sloshing around in the surf. If the past is prologue, the farther west on Santa Rose Island one goes the more numerous and larger the tarballs even on days when the weather seems great.<b><br /></b><br /><b>2. Cap Test Delayed, Resumes, Delayed, Resumes, etc. etc. etc.</b><br /><br />After a long day of on-again, off-again promises to begin the pressure testing on the new cap stack, late last night BP finally started the tests -- and discovered <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us+canada-10650590">" a leak on a line on the choke valve of the new cap."</a> Little wonder Energy Secretary Chu and his team thought it necessary to make BP re-check everything yesterday.<br /><br />We shouldn't be surprised that BP's engineers missed something. For three months, BP has been acting as if they're filming "The Keystone Kops Drill for Oil." Even when the corporation stubbornly sticks to sharing only what little good news there is, and <a href="http://journalism.about.com/b/2010/07/13/reporters-covering-bp-oil-spill-still-face-harassment.htm">suppressing all of the bad</a>, it screws up.<br /><br />Yesterday, however, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen were more explicit about the risks BP is running than any official involved, government or otherwise, has been before. As the New York Times<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/us/16spill.html"> reported today</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Mr. Gibbs described the review as “a series of steps” that were being taken “in order to ensure that what we’re doing is being done out of an abundance of caution to do no harm.” </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;"> Among the concer</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ns was that if the well was damaged during the test, oil and gas might leak from the seafloor around the well rather than up through the well bore as it is now.<br />* * *<br />Admiral Allen said the government had asked BP for more information on the structural strength of the well. And in allowing the test to proceed, the government stipulated that pressure be allowed to build up in intervals, with acoustic tests to gauge the well’s condition every six hours. That would most likely lengthen the du</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ration of the test, which had been expected to last from 6 to 48 hours.</span></p></blockquote> Earlier this morning, BP repaired the leaking hose. Now, says the New York Times in a late update, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/us/16spill.html">the "test can proceed."</a> Remember that<a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/thinking-unthinkable.html#father"> admonition of our dear old father</a>. He wasn't a pessimist, just a clear-eyed realist.<br /><br /><b>3. Booms on the Water.</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD84lS0uYrI/AAAAAAAAD6s/Tb3WDY92X6Q/s1600/10_0715_projgeenshores-boom.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 160px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD84lS0uYrI/AAAAAAAAD6s/Tb3WDY92X6Q/s200/10_0715_projgeenshores-boom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494172283774591666" border="0" /></a><br />Even in a moderately light breeze, as mentioned above, the oil booms in unprotected waters don't fare well. Even low waves wash over them, twist them, and sometimes dislodge them altogether. Yesterday, the boom on the mainland at the Project Greenshores site at the north of the 3-mile bridge was close to breaking up in less than 2 feet seas (see photo, left).<br /><br />It's disheartening to imagine what a stiff wind will do to them.<br /><br />On the other hand, in protected waters like the entrance to Little Sabine Bay, the boom was doing fairly well yesterday:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD840tTToQI/AAAAAAAAD60/IfOnes6tsD4/s1600/10_0715_sabine-bay-boom.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 314px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD840tTToQI/AAAAAAAAD60/IfOnes6tsD4/s400/10_0715_sabine-bay-boom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494172548580221186" border="0" /></a></span></span><b>4. The Story of O.</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD9AIQrzoVI/AAAAAAAAD7E/FL4cS4-U03g/s1600/10_0715_sria-elec-sign.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD9AIQrzoVI/AAAAAAAAD7E/FL4cS4-U03g/s200/10_0715_sria-elec-sign.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494180581077131602" border="0" /></a>Yes, there are <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/heres-to-your-health-july-4-weekend-bp.html#impactnotice">"oil impact notices"</a> stuck here and there at Pensacola Beach warning visitors of the possible presence of "oil products." But what about the electronic sign? Nary a word that so much as starts with the letter "O."<br /><br />Yesterday the sign read, "Swim with extra caution." Doesn't that sound almost like an invitation to swim rather than a health warning?<br /><b><br />5. New Tourist Game: Tarballs and Mousse.</b><br /><br />Not surprisingly, many land-lubbing tourists don't know a tarball from a mousse patty. Heck, most of us who've frequented the beach for years didn't know the difference either, until a couple of months ago.<br /><br />It seems, now, that tourists well enough informed to know we're experiencing an oil emergency may be coming to the beach out of curiosity. Yesterday, we came across a small party beaching it along the road to Ft. Pickens. They were from Missouri, the "show me" state. They had to see for themselves.<br /><br />Several were wading in the surf, playing at catching tarballs with each ebb and flow of the waves coming ashore. It's the latest tourist recreational activity, like shelling -- only for bits of oil pollution.<br /><br />We saw Yvonne from St. Louis snatch something small and orange from the surf before it washed back into the Gulf.<br /><br />"What's this?" she asked a friend.<br /><br />He shrugged and shook his head. "A shell, maybe?"<br /><br />"It's oil from the spill," we offered. "See how soft and pliable it is? They call that mousse."<br /><br />"Really?" she said excitedly. "It doesn't look like oil."<br /><br />We explained that the hard black things she had been grabbing out of the water are called tarballs. They are bits of oil that have weathered awhile in the air and water. The small orange glop she held in her hands now was unweathered oil. It had traveled from BP's well over a hundred and fifty miles away, probably under water for most of the time.<br /><br />Yvonne was so excited that she proudly displayed her find to all of her friends. We obligingly took a photo:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD8uYWoBofI/AAAAAAAAD6k/yQBF49vDnkw/s1600/10_0715_yvonne1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD8uYWoBofI/AAAAAAAAD6k/yQBF49vDnkw/s400/10_0715_yvonne1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494161066340491762" border="0" /></a></span><br />We didn't mean to be censorious of our new-found acquaintances, but we couldn't help remarking that it seemed a little, well, inappropriate that she looked so happy about finding oil on the beach.<br /><br />"You're right," she said after a moment's thought. "Here, take my picture again."<br /><br />This time she wrinkled her nose and screwed her face into what she supposed would be the locally-accepted expression:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD8t_6ZK0UI/AAAAAAAAD6c/uoT2_Ajib2E/s1600/10_0715_yvonne2.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD8t_6ZK0UI/AAAAAAAAD6c/uoT2_Ajib2E/s400/10_0715_yvonne2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494160646445125954" border="0" /></a></span><br />As they were leaving, we noticed that Yvonne took the mousse with her, despite our warning that it is toxic. A souvenir of her beach vacation.<br /><br /><b>6. Social Notes from Pensacola Beach.</b><br /><br />Rick Outzen, publisher of the local weekly Independent News, <a href="http://ricksblog.biz/?p=11640">reported yesterday that he's been getting complaints</a> "from business owners that attended the SRIA cocktail party for the Blue Angels and their wives on Friday, July 9 at the Hilton."<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">First, the beach lifeguards were there and talked through most of the presentations. Second, the names and titles of the Blues were stated incorrectly. When the Blues wanted to make their presentation to the SRIA, no one could find the board chairman or a board member to accept it.<br /><br />As one beach business owner and admitted Blues fan told me, "These men deserve our respect and admiration. That party was an embarrassment."</span></blockquote>The most shocking lapse, to us, is the absence of anyone from the Santa Rosa Island Authority. SRIA <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/drilling-for-dollar-sunday-july-11-bp.html#hypster">executive car-counter Buck Lee</a> likes to receive more awards than a TV exec at a sitcom convention. Once, he even had the SRIA <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2006/02/bucking-buck-lee.html#hummer">give himself a Hummer.</a><br /><br /><b>7. Journalism Award.</b><br /><br />Speaking of awards, Mac McClelland, <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/mac-mcclelland-in-pensacola.html">who was on Pensacola Beach a couple of weeks ago</a>, has won<a href="http://hillmanfoundation.org/sidneys/mac_mcclelland_wins_june_sidney"> the Hillman Foundation's monthly Sidney Award</a> for outstanding social consciousness in journalism. Her winning entry in Mother Jones magazine concerned BP's oil spill and the devastating effect it has had on the lives of families along the Louisiana coast. ["<a href="http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2010/06/louisiana-fishermen-suicide-depression-abuse">Depression, Abuse, Suicide: Fishermen's Wives Face Post-Spill Trauma</a>"]<br /><br /><b><a name="npr">8. NPR Continues to Doze Through Its Oil Coverage.</a></b><br /><br />National Public Radio this morning continued its <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/test-delay-wednesday-july-14-bp-oil.html#NPR">miserably superficial coverage </a>of the Great Oil-Poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico. At long distance from his sunny, eternally-optimistic desk in Washington D.C., where he's sure not to get his cuffs dirty, NPR'S science guy Richard Harris continues his completely credulous watch of the same robotic camera feeds that everyone else in the world sees. Then he reports what he thinks he saw.<br /><br />Have time to waste? Give a listen. Then ask NPR, is this the kind of<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/20/where_did_nprs_burger_money_go/"> "serious, in-depth reporting" they claimed they would do with Joan Kroc's $200 million? </a><p><br /></p><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><embed src="http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=128532123&amp;m=128532140&amp;t=audio" wmode="opaque" allowfullscreen="true" base="http://www.npr.org" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="386"></embed>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-13921481690908481272010-07-14T11:30:00.005-05:002010-07-16T05:06:54.263-05:00Test Delay Wednesday: July 14 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD1MzYjl9kI/AAAAAAAAD6E/loSlLidWTws/s1600/10_0714_oilcast-noaa.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 306px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD1MzYjl9kI/AAAAAAAAD6E/loSlLidWTws/s400/10_0714_oilcast-noaa.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493631566110651970" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast</b><br /><br />Not much change from previous oil forecasts for Pensacola Beach. We remain well within the "uncertainty" area of NOAA's potential forecast of washed-up tarballs and mousse, but so far this week only about one percent of Pensacola Beach <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100713/NEWS10/100713006">has been reported covered</a> with "sporadic tarballs." Light southwest winds and off-and-on overcast conditions continue.<br /><br /><b>2. Pressure Test Postponed.</b><br /><br />First the <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/very_important_test_to_involve.html">"well integrity" pressure tests</a> were to start "immediately" after the new "18-foot-tall, 150,000-pound" stack cap was seated. Then, it was Monday. Then Tuesday morning. Then Tuesday by noon. Then Tuesday mid-afternoon. Then evening.<br /><br />Now it may not be until Thursday -- if ever -- before pressure tests on BP's new cap stack begin. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/us/14cap.html?_r=1&amp;hpw">New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-14/bp-delays-test-of-new-cap-at-leaking-gulf-well-until-u-s-gives-go-ahead.html">Bloomberg News</a> were among the first to report late last night that start of the pressure testing --<br /><blockquote>was postponed after BP met with National Incident Commander Thad Allen, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a government team of scientists and industry experts, who decided more analysis needed to be done before they proceeded, Allen said in a statement last night.<br /><br />"We continue to prepare and review protocols for the well integrity test, including the seismic mapping run that was made around the well site this morning," Allen said. "As a result of these discussions, we decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis." </blockquote>As the Times explains:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">On its Web site, BP said in a statement that the test had been postponed after a meeting with Energy Secretary Stephen Chu “and his team of scientific and industry experts.” </span></blockquote>According to<a href="http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/780563/"> a statement issued a little after 8:30 CDT last night</a>, Admiral Thad Allen and Secretary Chu's group, seismic mapping of the seafloor yesterday morning <span style="font-size:small;">convinced them "that the process may benefit from additional analysis that will be performed tonight and tomorrow.</span>"<br /><br />BP's well bore is more than 12,000 feet, or 2+ miles into the Earth below the seafloor. There always has been concern that merely by "pressure testing" the new cap stack the oil company conceivably could cause additional, irreparable damage to the stack or the well itself, thus complicating or even negating August's relief well efforts. Hence, BP has issued multiple assurances that it would proceed slowly to close three open vent in the stack while trying to achieve higher pressures inside the stack; and it would re-open the vents if pressure dropped because that would signal problems below the seafloor.<br /><br />Now, it seems, seismic imaging has caused concerns that the well bore, or the rocky formations around it beneath the seafloor, may have been compromised by the original April 20 explosion. As Rolling Stone Magazine's<a href="http://trueslant.com/oshagraydavidson/2010/07/13/delay-in-testing-bp-well-hints-at-larger-problems/"> Osha Gray Davidson wrot</a><a href="http://trueslant.com/oshagraydavidson/2010/07/13/delay-in-testing-bp-well-hints-at-larger-problems/">e late last night</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Allen’s reference to an already performed “seismic mapping run” as a reason for delaying the test, sugges</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ts the possibility of a second even more serious problem. Geologists may have detected cracks or fissures in the rock surrounding the well, weaknesses probably caused by the initial explosion.</span> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">If that’s true, the area may not be stable enough to proceed with the well test. The pressure generated by shutting off the flow of oil could lead to a catastrophic failure of the well — allowing crude to spew into the water at a rate even greater than it already is.</span></p></blockquote><a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/drilling-for-dollar-sunday-july-11-bp.html#dougr">Sound familiar</a>?<br /><br /><b><a name="NPR">3. NPR's Leaking Coverage.</a></b><br /><br />For some reason National Public Radio's coverage of the oil spill has been leaking a lot of oil lately. It's all surface and no depth. Faced with what may be the biggest man-made environmental disaster in history, so far as we can tell NPR has no correspondents on the leak scene or along the Gulf Coast.<br /><br />This morning, NPR science reporter Richard Harris, still sitting at his desk in Washington D.C., continues his superficial "analysis" by confessing on air that he gets his information by "watching the robot under water" and that he really doesn't know what's going on or why. But, <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/cap-stack-monday-july-12-bp-oil-spill.html#capstackexchange">'Rah-rah BP! It's all so <i>exciting!</i></a><br /><br />Confronted with a glass of oil and asked if it's half-full or half-empty, Harris would say it looks full to him -- and then he'd drink it. Give a listen if you have time to waste:<p><br /></p><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><div style="padding-left: 0px; display: none;" ontop="true"></div><embed src="http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=128506423&amp;m=128506402&amp;t=audio" wmode="opaque" allowfullscreen="true" base="http://www.npr.org" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="386"></embed><br /><br /><b><a name="malaprop">4. Executive Malaprop.</a></b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.otrsite.com/articles/artwb011.html">Goodman Ace</a> would have been amused. During BP Corp. vice-president Kent Wells' <a href="http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&amp;contentId=7063039">afternoon telephone press briefing Tuesday</a>, he opened the discussion about the cap stack's then-anticipated integrity tests with this apology: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">So now let me move to the well integrity test. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >So I come with my head in my hand.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> I was a little optimistic this morning, thinking we’d get started by late morning or noon. [emphasis added]</span><br /></blockquote>We realize Wells meant to employ the usual shibboleth about apologetically approaching another with "hat in hand." But for Gulf Coast residents it was so much more apt the way he said it. Any number of coastal residents and businesses would like to have his head.<br /><br />As Jane Ace might have said, being funny must be why Wells gets "the big busts." We look forward to seeing him put his foot in his mousse more often.<br /><br /><b>5. Beach Oil Study.</b><br /><br />The National Science Foundation is supporting <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100707222312.htm">Florida State University professors Markus Huettel and Joel E. Kostka </a>in their study of "how quickly the Deepwater Horizon oil carried into Gulf of Mexico beach sands is being degraded by the sands' natural microbial communities, and whether native oil-eating bacteria that wash ashore with the crude are helping or hindering that process."<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">St. George Island, Fla., and Dauphin Island, Ala., have served as the primary research sites since early June, when the one-year study began. In addition, the researchers have obtained heavily oiled sand from Pensacola Beach, Fla., and from a barrier island off the Louisiana coast.<br />* * *<br />Huettel and Kostka will analyze sediment cores collected from Gulf beaches to find out how much and to what depth oil washed onto the shore is carried into the sand; how rapidly microbes in the sand are breaking it down; and how the oil pollution may be impacting the structure and function of natural m</span><span style="font-size:85%;">icrobial communities that help to protect water quality on the coast.</span></blockquote>The results also may shed light on whether dispersants help or hurt in the degradation of beached oil, as well as possible techniques for accelerating the degradation process.<br /><br /><b>6. Oily Games.</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD1U5sIoAaI/AAAAAAAAD6M/0bYUXPgEQrY/s1600/10_0714_dp-oil-game.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 127px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD1U5sIoAaI/AAAAAAAAD6M/0bYUXPgEQrY/s200/10_0714_dp-oil-game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493640470538486178" border="0" /></a>We <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/bp-board-game-wednesday-july-7-bp-oil.html#boardgame">predicted it</a>. An Xbox "indy" game is now available for download, called "Crisis in the Gulf." Price is $1.<br /><br /><b><i>No</i></b> reimbursement from BP for your losses is assured.<br /><br />In the game, the company saddled with stopping the leak is named "DP." Damned Petroleum? <a href="http://kotaku.com/5575586/an-xbox-video-game-about-the-gulf-oil-spill">View a promo here.</a><br /><br /><b>7. Beached Oil Map.</b><br /><br />The National Resources Defense Council, long a respected advocate for the environment, has posted <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/energy/gulfspill/beaches.asp"> a new interactive map</a> showing the latest info on beached oil, "closures, advisories, and notifications." Click on any dirty-looking "sand pail" and you get a pop-up screen with additional links to follow:<p><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD2zDIJb2xI/AAAAAAAAD6U/AXRy4qHMDew/s1600/10_0714_nrdc-map.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 395px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TD2zDIJb2xI/AAAAAAAAD6U/AXRy4qHMDew/s400/10_0714_nrdc-map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493743986769910546" border="0" /></a> </span></span></p><b><a name="lockerbie">8. BP's Oily Lockerbie Leak.</a> </b><br /><br />Yesterday, four U.S. senators from New York and New Jersey wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/07/13/us/politics/AP-US-US-Lockerbie-Bomber.html?_r=2&amp;hp">to demand an investigation</a> into "whether <span class="meta-classifier">oil</span> giant BP played a role in winning last year's release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie airliner bombing." The "four Democrats said they were concerned BP may have put profits ahead of justice in the al-Megrahi case, given the petroleum giant's current handling of the Gulf oil spill."<br /><br />There is not even a tenuous connection in any of this to the oil spill, of course. But, <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/06/oil-hell-breaks-loose-thursday-june-10.html#distantmirror">like the ongoing BP oil spill</a>, it could be considered additional evidence that we are witnessing the early stages of an epic power struggle over who and by what means economic life on Earth is to be organized.<br /><br />Is the paramount power now democratically-elected nation-states? Or, is it shareholder-owned mega-corporations? "Both," our friend who just retired from the oil industry told us last night.<br /><br />The Lockerbie incident, like the oil spill, casts more light on that question. For those who don't remember, the BBC has <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/6236538.stm">a synopsis of events</a>, with links to original news stories.<br /><br />On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland after taking off from London. Two hundred and seventy people were killed; the great majority of them Americans. Almost three years later, two suspected intelligence agents working for Moammar Ghadhafi's Libyan government were charged with multiple counts of murder. After intervention by Nelson Mandela, Ghadhafi finally agreed to surrender the defendants in April, 1999.<br /><br />They were tried over a nine-month period in 2000-2001 by a Scottish court sitting, unusually, in the Netherlands. One defendant was acquitted and the other, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was convicted. After al-Megrahi's last appeal was rejected in 2002, he began serving his life sentence in a Scottish prison. A year later, the government of Libya paid nearly $3 billion into a compensation fund for the Lockerbie victims.<br /><br />And now we get to the BP angle:<ul><li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/6731739.stm">On May 29, 2007</a>, British Prime Minister Tony Blair signed "a memorandum of understanding" agreeing to "shortly 'commence negotiations' on prisoner transfer, extradition and mutual assistance in criminal law, with a final deal signed within 12 months."</li> <li><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7224194.stm">February, 2008,</a> it was "reported that Libya had just ratified a £450m contract with oil giant BP, after [British] ministers drafted a prisoner transfer agreement that [reports said] could cover al-Megrahi." The Scottish government protested. The British government, which had "said at the time that the [prisoner exchange] agreement did not cover Megrahi," now was admitting a prisoner exchange involving al-Megrahi was a "matter for discussion."</li><li>In <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/7681387.stm">October, 2008,</a> al-Megrahi's lawyer publicly announced that the Libyan had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer.</li><li>In July, 2009, al-Megrahi applied to the Scottish courts for compassionate release because his cancer was terminal. The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/8168679.stm">BBC reported at the time</a> that "Traditionally, only applications from those with three months to live are granted."<br /></li><li>On August 20, 2009 it was announced that Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/6061306/Lockerbie-bomber-released-Scottish-Justice-Secretary-Kenny-MacAskills-statement-in-full.html">had issued a decision releasing al-Megrahi to go home.</a> MacAskill said, among other things, that the decision was based on the statement by the Scottish prison system's Director of Health and Care "that a three-month prognosis is now a reasonable estimate" for al-Megrahi's life expectancy. Two other doctors examined him and concluded <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iiBOZttOI2A4-tbqiuHERX3KkX-Q">"Megrahi could live for 19 months."</a></li><li>A few days earlier, <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6797118.ece">the London Times reported</a> that "industry sources" and a Libyan informant were saying there was a direct connection between al-Megrahi's release and the British government's desire to "liberate Britain’s largest industrial company from a string of problems hampering its $900 million (£546 million) Libyan gas projects... ."<br /></li><li>A year later, al-Megrahi is still alive and secure in Libya. The doctor who certified a year ago that he had three months to live <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iiBOZttOI2A4-tbqiuHERX3KkX-Q">is "embarrassed." </a><br /></li></ul>Moammar Ghadafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/13/bp.release.connection/?hpt=Sbin">recently told CNN</a> --<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">that Libya pressured the British government to include the convicted terrorist in the prisoner release agreement. Initially, he said, Britain refused to heed Libya's demands that Megrahi be included in the prisoner release agreement.<br /><br />"There was no mention of Mr. Megrahi until the British said 'we are ready to sign but there should be a clause mentioning that Mr. Megrahi is excluded.' And then we said no," Gadhafi said. "We were very very angry. It's not acceptable."<br /><br />Gadhafi said the agreement was that Megrahi would be released if Libya dropped its appeals in the Lockerbie case. But, Gadhafi said, Libya still believes he is innocent.</span> </blockquote>If you think it's all about politics, think again. "<span style="font-style: italic;">Sà, cle l'argent! Sà, cle l'argent</span>," wrote<a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/462/000097171/"> another chronicler of the fourteenth century</a> in the age when newly invented nation-states were growing powerful enough to rival the papacy. "Money, money! Such is the cry which all the day long sounds in the ears of the famished people." [Masson, <a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qtit=The%20Story%20of%20Mediaeval%20France&amp;qauth=Masson%20Gustave&amp;qsort=p">The Story of Mediaeval France</a>]<br /><br />Both justice and democracy are secondary. "That's just the way it is," our retired oil industry friend says.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-4328745831156917492010-07-13T13:52:00.006-05:002010-07-16T05:11:10.554-05:00Cap Test Tuesday: July 13 BP Oil Spill Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TDynv3pnSjI/AAAAAAAAD58/3oaNpCIbfZw/s1600/10_0713_oilproj_noaa.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TDynv3pnSjI/AAAAAAAAD58/3oaNpCIbfZw/s400/10_0713_oilproj_noaa.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493450086319344178" border="0" /></a><b>1. Oilcast</b><br /><br />Hot, largely dry, occasional brief summer storms here and there, and "more oil coming," <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100713/NEWS01/7130317/More-oil-expected-locally">according to Kris Wernowsky.<br /></a><br /><b>2. Containment Cap.</b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/tests_of_new_containment_cap_t.html"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K1fewZqTsTY/TDvnsWFc_nI/AAAAAAAAD50/cOUzoG-Wi1Y/s200/10_07013_wellhead.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 164px;" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493238919537163890" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&amp;contentId=7063637">BP announced yesterday</a> that "t<span class="grey">he three ram capping stack was installed on the Deep Water Horizon LMRP at 7 p.m. CDT. The stack completes the installation of the new sealing cap."<br /><br /></span> Jaquetta White, <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/tests_of_new_containment_cap_t.html">reporting for the Times-Picayune</a>, has a lucid and detailed description of yesterday's swap-out of containment caps:<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Oil was still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico Monday night, however. At least two openings in a "perforated pipe" attached to the new cap could be seen on BP's live video feed shooting oil. But that oil flow is expected until the cap is completely hooked up and the pipe is "closed in," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said.<br /><br />With the cap in place, BP will begin conducting "well integrity tests" on the blown-out Macondo well this morning, Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said. [This morning,<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD9GU6IFG0"> BP announced at the daily morning briefing</a> that testing will begin around noon.] The pressure readings will tell the company whether the cap will be enough to hold the oil inside the well until a relief well is drilled or whether crews should continue sucking oil from the well to ships on the surface.</span></blockquote>That's the bottom line. As for how BP got to this point, <a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/tests_of_new_containment_cap_t.html">click here for the rest</a> of White's article. It makes for a slick read.<br /><br />At an early morning briefing today, BP vice-president Kent Wells --<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">said tests will begin at mid-day of the 150,000 pound tight-fitting cap, placed Monday on the well in the Gulf of Mexico that began leaking April 20. He said the tests will take between six and 48 hours and scientists will monitor well pressure at "minute" intervals. During that time, oil will continue leaking. </span></blockquote><b><a name="lastingdamage">3. Lasting Damage Done.</a></b><br /><br /><a href="http://newsone.com/nation/associatedpress2/new-oil-well-cap-faces-tests-from-bp/">Another AP dispatch cautions</a> that even assuming everything goes as hoped -- the new cap contains all the oil and the relief wells work to shutter the well permanently -- it will be years before Gulf Coast beaches return to normal:<br /><p></p><blockquote> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Even if the flow of oil is choked off while BP works on a permanent fix, the spill has already damaged everything from beach tourism to the fishing industry.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Tony Wood, director of the<a href="http://www.sci.tamucc.edu/nscs/"> National Spill Control School</a> at Texas A&amp;M-Corpus Christi said the sloppiest of the oil — mousse-like brown stuff that has not yet broken down — will keep washing ashore for several months, with the volume slowly decreasing over time.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">He added that hardened tar balls could keep hitting beaches and marshes each time a major storm rolls through for a year or more. Those tar balls are likely trapped for now in the surf zone, gathering behind sand bars just like sea shells.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">“It will still be getting on people’s feet on the beaches probably a year or two from now,” Wood said.</span></p></blockquote><p></p><span style="font-size:100%;">The difference is that the world will have moved on soon and the oil spill will be largely forgotten, except perhaps at family vacation time or by all of those thrown out of work as the local economy inexorably declines.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">Americans will have resumed driving Hummers and similar gas-guzzling vehicles. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">BP Corp. will have changed its company name to something even more obscure (maybe just "B"), followed by a world-wide advertising campaign bragging that it's the world leader in developing new ways to 'protect Earth's delicate environment.'<br /><br />Meanwhile, the company will be turning its attention to drilling deeper and riskier wells. Suddenly, one day, claims filed by coastal businesses and residents will start bouncing back <span style="font-style: italic;">"Address Unknown."</span> The water will remain oily, the air foul, the summer days ever hotter and wetter with the worsening climate.<br /><br />Who knows? In just a couple of years even deeply damaged residents of the Gulf Coast when they troop to the polls might wind up sending <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006020033">one</a> or <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0621/Louisiana-backs-oil-industry-wants-drilling-moratorium-thrown-out">another</a> "drill, baby, drill" politician to the White House.<br /><br />We'd like to think the human animal is capable of learning from experience. But history offers little evidence of it; we can't even celebrate <a href="http://www.cbd.int/2010/about/">"International Year of Biodiversity" </a>without killing off <a href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_animals_died_because_of_the_2010_BP_gulf_oil_spill&amp;alreadyAsked=1&amp;rtitle=How_many_animals_died_because_of_BP%27s_oil_spill">"billions of sea organisms." </a><br /></span><br /><div><b><a name="gambling">4. Surrendering to Gambling Organizations.</a> </b><br /><br />Pensacola News Journal columnist Reggie Dogan today hoists <a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100713/NEWS01/7130311/1039">the flag of surrender</a> and goes all-in for turning to the casino gambling industry as Pensacola's only hope for economic survival. That's just about as senseless as <a href="http://www.livescience.com/health/060407_quack_clinics.html">turning to Laetrile when you're diagnosed</a> with cancer. Worse, actually. Laetrile doesn't cure you, but it doesn't kill you, either.<br /><br />We could put Dogan's terrible idea down to an unfortunate bout of temporary insanity brought on by the oil spill blues, except for the fact that the editorial board of the newspaper he works for similarly admitted defeat two weeks ago when it<a href="http://www.pnj.com/article/20100702/OPINION/7020310/Editorial-Time-for-gambling-"> flip-flopped on gaming at Perdido Key. </a><br /><br />The PNJ was once so strongly opposed to the idea of introducing gambling on this county's beaches that its unrelenting negative coverage scared off a hotel developer who was angling for the necessary permits. The newspaper now appears to have become so disheartened about Pensacola's future economic prospects that it might next endorse pole dancing classes at U.W.F. and cocaine parlors in the churches so long as it means a couple of dozen new jobs.<br /><br />A couple of weeks after the BP leak started, we received a quick message from a cousin of ours who lives in the Far West. He's a smart and highly educated guy. His message was short but succinct. Here it is in its entirety:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:100%;">"Re: oil spill.... How's the new casino construction going?</span>"</span></span><br /></div><br />Our cousin was thinking four steps ahead of most other people. He understood early on that the BP oil leak would soon become an unprecedented disaster. He foresaw that tourist-dependent communities like ours would be devastated economically. And, being a former elected official himself, he knew that local pols and civic leaders would reach, first, for the cheapest-seeming, easiest appearing, most common solution available.<br /><br />In short, his message revealed an immediate understanding that there would be a direct line of descent from the devastating oil leak to equally ruinous gambling casinos. He also knows that this would be exactly the worst move we could make.<br /><br />Not so much for moral reasons, as Dogan supposes many will think, but because when gambling casinos come to town it's like a second oil well blow-up. Casinos don't improve the local economy, they destroy it. As <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2009/02/perdido-key-disaster.html">we said over a year ago</a> when gambling for Perdido Key was first proposed --<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Our objections are rooted mostly in concerns about maintaining the environmental sustainability of our fragile island paradise, the heightened risk of public official corruption that inevitably follows legalized gambling, the certainty that desperate poor people will become even more vulnerable to exploitation, and the increased vulgarization of American culture.<br /><br />Widespread gambling inevitably cheapens an entire community. If you doubt it, visit Atlantic City.</span></blockquote>Pensacola has more than its share of low income residents. Good-paying jobs already are scarce. According to our own back-of-the-envelope calculations, the area could lose as much as a third of its economy over the next decade or so, unless there is a bold and innovative commitment to making it much more like a great place to live as well as visit.<br /><br />Throwing open the gates to gambling casinos will not improve the quality of life in Pensacola. It will disappear it altogether. The PNJ editorial and Dogan's proposals are precisely the kind of <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/06/ctd-wednesday-june-30-bp-oil-spill.html#technicaldisaster">unthinking, ineffectual boosterism we have warned against</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. "Best Places to Live in America." </span> </div><div><br />CNN is touting a new ranking of the <a href="http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/100-best-places-to-live-in-america-2010-edition">"10 Best Places to Live in America</a>." Interestingly, not one is known as a gambling mecca. (Although Eden Prairie, "which doesn't have much of a downtown," comes close with at least one Indian casino about as far from what passes for the center of town as the Poarch casino in Atmore, Alabama, is from Pensacola.)<br /><br />The attributes which these 10 towns share that make them attractive to employers are "excellent schools" (although Ft. Collins' schools are now endangered by state legislative budget cuts ); a "diverse" ethnic population; "pedestrian-friendly" parks, playgrounds, and shopping districts; "an embarrassment of arts and entertainment riches;" ample forested areas, ponds, and parks; and plenty of athletic facilities for soccer, golf, tennis, and the usual assortment of other sports enjoyed by people of every age.<br /><br />There was a time when each of these 10 locales was down in the dumps. We know. We've been in most of them at one time or another. Several expressly <span style="font-style: italic;">rejected </span>gambling proposals as a path for the future.<br /><br />Do you suppose Pensacola could learn something from them? Is it within our capabilities to greatly improve our schools? Expand and beautify our parks and playgrounds? Create more "pedestrian-friendly" shopping experiences, more accommodating athletic and sports facilities? If not an "embarrassment of riches" in the arts, can we strive for "ample?"<br /><br />Casinos prosper by playing only games where the house always wins in the end. We propose, instead, that Gannett Publishing Corp. organize Reggie Dogan, the entire PNJ editorial board, and select civic leaders for a fact-finding mission to see if the odds of reviving Pensacola's economy through improving its livability are any better than those the casinos will offer. They can't be any worse.<br /><br /><b>6. Son of Drilling Ban. </b><br /><br />Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday issued revised rules declaring a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The rule replaces one which was disapproved last week by a three-judge panel of the ultra-conservative Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/us/13commission.html?_r=1&amp;hp">The New York Times has the basics</a>:<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> The revised moratorium would allow some drilling rigs to resume operating under certain conditions. To qualify, the rig’s owners must prove that they have adequate plans in place to quickly shut down an out-of-control well, that the blowout preventers atop the wells it drills have passed rigorous new tests, and that sufficient cleanup resources are on hand in case of a spill. Industry officials said it would be difficult to meet those conditions quickly, which could threaten thousands of jobs.</span></blockquote>Will oil industry interests again sue to stop this regulation? Does oil on the beach stink?<div><br /><b>7. BP Illness Records.</b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/deepwater-injury-illness-data-apr.-22-2010-to-july-4-2010#document/p2">ProPublica has been compiling</a> all of BP's illness reports since the day after the Deepwater Horizon platform explosion. There really isn't enough detailed information publicly available, yet, to draw definitive conclusions other than this: contact with oil, tarballs, and wet mousse can make you very sick.<br /><br /><b>8. The Dispersant Mystery.</b><br /><br />David Hammer is covering the second day of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission hearings in New Orleans. He<a href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/commission_federal_governments.html"> reports today</a> on what can only be considered the completely incoherent and unconvincing case made by EPA assistant administrator Mathy Stanislaus over BP's authorized use of massive amounts of dispersants to submerge the oil leak.<br /><blockquote>Stanislaus painted a picture of an EPA that's putting a lot of effort into easing public fears about the chemical dispersants and other toxic impacts of the spill response, but commission members echoed concerns from some of Monday's public comments about the feeling of mystery surrounding the effects of chemicals being used. </blockquote>It didn't help when Stanislaus said dispersants "are not as toxic" as oil, then moments later claimed "oil collected as waste showed it wasn't hazardous."<br /><br />At the core of this issue lies the suspicion that "methane-heavy" <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10603727.stm">dispersant pools actually worsen the toxicity</a> of Gulf waters far more than would the massive oil leak itself. <a href="http://cleanthegulfnow.org/archives/review-of-oil-spill-dispersant-literature/">A review of the scientific literature suggests</a> "most researchers (about 75 %) found that chemically-dispersed oil was more toxic than physically-dispersed oil." <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">About half of these found that the cause for this was the increased PAHs (typically about 5 to 10 times) in the water column. Others noted the increased amount of total oil in the water column. Two researchers noted the damage to fish gills caused by the increased amount of droplets.</span></blockquote> Stanislaus, Hammer says, admitted that the EPA agrees "the process needs to be changed." It appears BP wasn't the only organization which didn't have a clue of the risks that attend deepwater drillng.<br /><br /><b>9. Corporations of Interest</b>.<br /><br />Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones Magazine, in an <a href="http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/07/blame-game-who-might-hold-stake-gulf-disaster">on-line article posted yesterday</a>, brings us up to speed on the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the BP catastrophe. Turns out, there are multiple "corporations of interest," to paraphrase John Ashcroft, who are as shadowy and scary as any terrorist organization -- and much more capable of wreaking havoc on the U.S.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">minor edit 7-13 pm</span><br /></div></div>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-67731856618735081362010-07-12T17:58:00.003-05:002010-07-12T18:02:47.505-05:00BP's Stack Swap Live Video Overnight<p> Toggle the <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">X</span></span> (lower right) to enlarge all.</p><iframe src="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/oil-ticker/video.html" style="" marginheight="5" marginwidth="5" width="300px" frameborder="0" height="490" scrolling="no"></iframe>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-29472844839357033952010-07-12T14:02:00.001-05:002010-07-12T14:03:49.643-05:00Is BP's Well Well?According to BP's COO, Doug Suttles, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/us/13cap.html?src=mv">New York Times reports today</a>, we should know soon if the <a href="http://pbrla.blogspot.com/2010/07/drilling-for-dollar-sunday-july-11-bp.html#dougr">worst case scenario</a> is still in the picture:<blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">With the installation of a new cap on its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico progressing smoothly, BP prepared on Monday to conduct tests to determine whether the flow of oil escaping from the well could be halted completely.<br />* * *<br />If the tests show the pressure rising and holding — an indication that there was no significant damage along the length of the well bore, which extends 13,000 feet below the sea floor — the valves could remain closed, effectively ending the three-month gusher.<br />* * *<br />On the other hand, the tests could show the pressure remaining lower than expected, which Mr. Suttles said would indicate a “problem with the integrity” of the well. In that case, he said, the valves would have to be reopened, oil would start escaping from the well again, and the collection systems would have to be turned back on. </span></blockquote>The answer should be known within a few days, and certainly by the end of the week.Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8586513.post-88220410828991271072010-07-12T13:28:00.005-05:002010-07-12T13:51:57.962-05:00When the Deficit Doesn't MatterWhen is it that the federal deficit doesn't matter? When it comes to giving additional tax cuts to wealthy people who make more than $250,000 a year.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_07/024681.php">Steve at Washington Monthy</a>:<blockquote>Let's be real clear about this. When Democrats propose extending unemployment benefits in the midst of an unemployment crisis, Republicans insist that's out of the question and refuse to allow the Senate to even vote on the idea -- the deficit matters more. When Democrats propose aid to states to prevent hundreds of thousands of additional layoffs, Republicans insist that's out of the question and refuse to allow the Senate to even vote on the idea -- the deficit matters more.<br /><br />But when tax cuts -- <a href="http://www.offthechartsblog.org/whose-deficit-is-it-anyway/">the single biggest cause of the current massive deficit</a> -- are on the line, Republicans effectively say, "Screw the deficit. We believe deficit reduction is more important than economic growth, except when we believe the opposite."<br /><br />It would be about this time that the Tea Party crowd, if it had any integrity or intellectual consistency, would pipe up and reject the GOP tax-cut rhetoric, reiterating its commitment to deficit reduction. Anyone prepared to place a wager on this one?<br />* * *<br />[T]he tax cuts didn't stimulate the economy when they were approved. The tax cuts passed in early 2008 didn't stimulate the economy and prevent a recession, either. The tax cuts in the stimulus package were the least effective measure in the entire recovery effort.</blockquote> Guess what Florida politician wants to give more tax cuts to the rich? The<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/29/rubio-bush-tax-cuts/"> answer is here.</a>Beach Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16153908891922140526noreply@blogger.com0